They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do… - Robert Penn Warren

What glass unwinking gives our trust
Its image back, what echo names
The names we hurl at namelessness?

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist anymore, speaks a name — Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave — which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger. But he humors the drooling doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night or in the middle of a crowded street said, “Gee, listen to this — ‘On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves — ’” The Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not