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I need to reach beyond interior decoration, biography. Art is a way of melting out through one's skin. "What, who is this about?" is not the essential question. A poem is not about; it is out of and to. Passionate language in movement. The deep structure is always musical, and physical -- as breath, as pulse

I have been increasingly willing to let the unconscious offer its materials, to listen to more than the one voice of a single idea. Perhaps a simple way of putting it would be to say that instead of poems about experiences I am getting poems that are experiences, that contribute to my knowledge and my emotional life even while they reflect and assimilate it.

Mark Twain was underestimated by his fans; Henry James was largely ignored by his countrymen and preferred to live in England (he even became a British Citizen). America was, alas, a country of great eccentrics and great prudes, of great writers and few readers.

To claim that literature on its own is going to change reality would be an act of madness or arrogance. It seems to me no less foolish to deny that it can aid in making this change.

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it

It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment--that explores in poetry.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Matt Caprioli

Matt Caprioli

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