Reading a good poem can give me a far bigger kick than a novel. But it's not something I can keep doing. It would be like shooting up 10 times a day.

Reading a good poem can give me a far bigger kick than a novel. But it's not something I can keep doing. It would be like shooting up 10 times a day.

A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.

Let's say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he loves or has been so traumatized by the possibility of beatings and punishments that he's afraid to act. If the trauma is great enough, that person's life may become frozen, emotionally frozen even though he still gets up in the morning, is busy all day, and goes to bed at night. But there's this empty space that begins to fill with rage, rage toward everyone - the perpetrator, the people in the world who haven't suffered, even toward himself. (174)

There's a Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas. He was a very crotchety, strange man, but his poems are wonderful. He was nominated for the Nobel in the 1990s but never won.

Baudelaire's L'Héautontimorouménos was long seen to be a sexual sadomasochistic poem, it is now generally accepted that the poem is about writing poetry.

Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all. The comic element works as a surprise. It is unexpected and energizing.