Sometimes someone will tell me about an author I've never heard of before and that will send me to that person. That's how I discovered Thomas Bernhard, an Austrian novelist whose novels tend to be one long rant.

I'm reading "The Sunset of a Splendid Century" by W.H. Lewis. He was C.S. Lewis's brother. He wrote two books about the French court of Louis XIV that are incredibly detailed. They are books that on every page you say, "Wow, think of that."

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.

For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying.

I remember coming upon Philip Larkin in my 20s in the early '60s and when Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" came out it knocked me off my feet.

Each thing I do, I rush through so I can do something else. In such a way do the days pass - -a blend of stock car racing and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral. Through the windows of my speeding car I see all that I love falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited.

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.