Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.
But there is some way in which poets believe that and this is dangerous, too believe that their calling gives them a certain freedom. A certain freedom to live in a free way.
But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.
Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.
It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.
But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.
There are so many things that poetry is about, one of which is memory.
If poets were realistic, they wouldn't be poets.
I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry.
My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.
The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.
Poetry was invented as an mnemonic device to enable people to remember their prayers.
The trouble with the performance poets is that they don't seem to have read anything. So there is not a real sense of the poetic tradition in their work.
They need to learn poetry. They don't need to learn about poetry. They don't need to be told how to interpret poetry. They don't need to be told how to understand poetry. They need to learn it.
And I watch my friends, most of whom are in academic life because most poets have to be in academic life, there aren't so many other ways to survive.
And one of the odd things about it is that poetry is now fleeing from the academies to another institution, which is the performance poetry.
But nobody can write poetry all the time.
People who deliver their work in poetry slams have a lot of vitality, and they are more dramatic than the institutional/academic poets.
If they want to know anything about poetry, they simply have to go out and learn it.
However, in 1950 there might have been 150 books of poetry published in a year. In 1997, there are probably about 1,500.
Obviously, there is a connection between the outer face of the poet and the persona that emerges in his or her work.
The more poetry you have in the head, the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all.