about art. A person can’t just stop writing poetry and join the “real world.” Poetry, for the poet, IS the real world. The “real world” of others…the following recipes, the ledgers, the spread-sheets, the literal geography, the sequential monotony of the industrial life–this is an impossible box for a poet or an artist or a musician to cram herself into.
Poets trip over lines. Lines such as my current favorite by Maurice Manning “They should have told us the sky is the highest steeple” (from his Fogtown poem).
The world needs each of us, each distinct kind of person.
My Writing Life 