You know I know you know I know you know.
My thoughts are crowded with death and it draws so oddly on the sexual that I am confused to be attracted by, in effect, my own annihilation.
Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.
helplanguagepoetry
I deliberately decided to write a kind of guide to leather bars for straight people, for people not into leather, so that people could see what it was all about.
people
There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.
poetrywar
As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery.
tso-art
These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough. No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.
theend
It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired, the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!
changefamethetimestime
Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy, To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly.
change
Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs He turns revolt into a style, prolongs The impulse to a habit of the time.
stylethetimestime
I don't know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home.
homeselftests
I had assumed that I would age with all my friends growing old around me, dying off very gradually one by one. And here was a plague that cut them off so early.
age
I don't think of sex as a self-destructive impulse.
self
I work best in rhyme and meter. I was most confident of myself in that way.
work
While I don't satisfy my curiosity about the way I work, I'm terribly curious about the way other poets work. But I would think that's true about many of us.