Stephen Dobyns

These people you used to see every day, friends or acquaintances, after a while they become as distant as any stranger, people you suddenly recall late at night--you remember something they said or something silly that someone once did. For a few moments they completely occupy your mind; then you forget them again.

Why are doors more difficult to openas if some sadness were leaning against them?Why do windows darken and trees bendwhen there is no wind? You call that occasionalroar the roar of a plane and I imaginea time when I might have believed that. But now the darkness has been going onfor too long, and I have accustomed myselfto the pleasure of thinking that soonthere will be no reason to hold on in this placewhere rocks are like water and it__ so difficultto find something solid to hold on to.

The obsession was gone. We liked each other, even loved each other. And our sex was still good, but the hunger was gone. Either it just wore out or we wore each other out. A passion like that pushes everything else out of its path. You can't be married and have jobs and children and work and write and have something like an emotional bubonic plague.

It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him.

Most women are more into real estate than sex. They want to own you.

Hesitancy is the surest destroyer of talent. One cannot be timorous and reticent, one must be original and loud. New metaphors, new rhythms, new expressions of emotion can only spring from unhindered gall. Nothing should interfere with that intuition--not the fear of appearing stupid, nor of offending somebody, nor jeopardizing publication, nor being trivial. The intuition must be as unhindered as a karate chop.

For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying.

One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent.