Q: A day in the life.
A: Yes. Actually, six months in the life.
As I go back over the ground. Sift through the ashes.
What did it mean?
How did I get here?
Where am I?
Is there any way out?
Q: Is this it? Was this it?
A: I’m feeling like this is it.
This was it.
Q: An agent wrote to you, “I wish you great success in however you choose to measure it. I think you have already been quite successful.”
A: I am trying to settle for that. Not to feel like a failure because I didn’t achieve a worldly success. I didn’t gain the recognition I sought. I compared myself to people who had different goals and different approaches to realizing them.
Did I achieve my own goals?
To get the word right on the page and the pages out to readers.
Did I create a body of work? Over the course of a writing life?
If I did that, who’s to gainsay me? Who am I to gainsay myself?
Q: You wake up writing poems in your head.
The poems form themselves into books.
The books form series.
A: Yes. The books illustrate the process.
Reading them is like writing them.
It’s direct.
Q: Immediate.
A: In real time.
Q: Not everybody’s cup of tea.
A: Not everybody can do it.
For 40 years. 39 years. If I make it.
Q: You care.
A: I care.