There has always been for me an incessant daydreaming about the different aspects of rhyme, rhythm, the origins of words (real or imaginary). So I guess that is the source of my being a writer and a poet.

That's the why?
Yes, that's the why

And the when?
Ah, the when, well, it's hard to say. Writing begins in reading, no?, and I began reading very seriously at the same time I got involved with visual art, when I was in junior high school. I was living in New York, where there was an enormous potential to see painting, Abstract Expressionist painting and the work that came after, Pop Art,and also theater, music. So that's when I first imagined some possibility of making art myself. I met Susan in high school, in February 1968. ’68 was a very interesting year, perhaps now we can say even a famous year. I was a senior at the Bronx High School of Science and Susan went to Music and Art. We would go to art galleries together and museum shows. Susan's parents were artists; my parents, well, my father was a businessman, we were not an arts-oriented family. And then I went to college and, you know, studied and read, and this is when I did my earliest work that directly relates to what I do now. At college I edited a couple of literary magazines, I did theater, too, a sort of experimental theater, and that was more visible than writing. But I guess writing was always in the back of my mind.

Why do you consider poetry important?
Poetry is not important. That's why it matters.

Which poets do you admire? How do you feel they relate to your own writing and life?
I admire many poets whom I do not like and like many poets whom I don't admire. It's a complex question, but then this is always my problem, so many apparently simple things seem complex to me. There are many poets that are, in some aspects of their lives or thought, not very admirable but who are still great poets; the most famous example would be Ezra Pound, but he’s hardly alone.

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