And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.
Maybe it is something to do with age, but I have become fonder of poetry than of prose.
The more I read my poems, the more I find out about them. I still read them with the same passion I felt when I wrote them as a young man.
It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.
Poems seem to have a life of their own. They tell you when enough is enough.
I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have.
Most poets in their youth begin in adolescent sadness. I find it more rewarding to end in gladness.
The thing is, I've been writing for a long time now, trying to be a poet for the last 40 years, and it's still very difficult not to second-guess myself when reading my own work.
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.