You speak of Lord Byron and me; there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
The poet sees better than other mortals. I do not see things as they are, but according to my own subjective impression, and this makes life easier and simpler.
If I see something that's extremely challenging, I'm like, 'That seems really hard. Let's try it.' It's just my personality.
I try to create a challenge for myself in each book. And sometimes, believe me, I just kick myself afterwards, and say, 'Why on earth did you ever attempt this, you idiot!' But I'm always better for the experience.
If you look at my life, generally, I've been put in situations which were difficult and which I conquered.
Sometimes I can think of nothing more blissful than going to Berkeley and reading Byron for three years.
The way I see things, the way I see life, I see it as a struggle. And there's a great deal of reward I have gained coming to that understanding - that existence is a struggle.
Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.
The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it.
I'm not quite sure when I began to be troubled by the creeping sense of my own ludicrousness, but it persisted - and eventually grew into a fascination. I started writing about it. Thus, in His characteristically mysterious way, the Lord made clear His plans for me.
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