Archives - April 2001

The morning is greying with an unwritten poem. An attack of perhapses.

A mystery is a book the publisher thinks will sell better if it has "mystery" on the cover.

The unconscious creates, the ego edits.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

In the novel you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival.

The sheer pleasure of telling a story may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.

We read to know we're not alone.
milk.

I never write exercises, but sometimes I write poems which fail and call them exercises.

I try to leave out the parts that people skip.

Poet: Lofty synonym for "blockhead."

We want competence, but competence itself is deadly. What you want is vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.

Poetry. I like to think of it as statements made on the way to the grave.

Happy Easter, Happy Easter, Me oh my there's a lot to buy, there's shopping I must do. Happy Easter to you.

The moment a man begins to talk about technique, that's proof he is fresh out of ideas.

Of the many definitions of poetry, the simplest is still the best: "memorable speech."

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

The adjective is the enemy of the noun.

Remember that each character must sound different from the others. And they should not all sound like you.

Resist much, obey little.

Books, if you don't put them first, tend to sulk. They retreat into a corner and refuse to work.

Say it, say it. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

To Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, Hamlet was a minor play.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either.

It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.

Thirty percent of Americans may write poetry, but I doubt that thirty percent read poetry, even their own.

At my first literary luncheon, a woman asked me with absolute sincerity, 'How does it feel to have written your best book first?'

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The only reason to write a first novel is if you absolutely can not.

The word May is a perfumed word. It is an illuminated initial. It means youth, love, song, and all that is beautiful in life.