There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.
It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.
A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.
The poem is the literary form of the 21st century. It's able to connect young people in a deep way to language... it's language as play.
The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.
Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master... it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.
When I was a young man, I understood that poetry was two things - it was difficult to understand, but you could understand that the poet was miserable. So for a while there, I wrote poems that were hard to understand, even by me, but gave off whiffs of misery.
I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.
But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.
A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.