Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.
Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
