This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.

I talk thinking that I shouldn't talk: that is how I talk.

I get tired of talking when I want to be silent.

I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it.

I am completely passive about my poetry, unless I sense the rhythms, see the images and hear the words spontaneously, I am helpless.

I don't like talking. I don’t like people talking to me.. .Painting is silence.

In a way, we [poets] are listeners. I go to poetry because I don’t have the words.” —

...there are times when silence is a poem.

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself

That is one of the many reasons why I avoid speaking as much as possible. For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine.

Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.

I did these poems in a very 'open-minded' effort to find an often silent/silenced voice. There are things we do not ever say. There are things we don't know how to say. There are things that have never been said.

A young poet suddenly falls silent
for fear of telling the truth.
An old poet falls silent for fear
the best in a poem
is its lie.