Well, for a change of pace after all that heavy stuff,
I want to read a couple of poems about writing that first grew
out of an experience of taking my poems to another poet who
doesn't live in Tucson anymore and seeing if I
could get some impressions.
And I got what I would call a lot of [? neggo, ?]
which meant like negative feedback.
Some of it was good actually.
But being an editor myself, it was a kind of a good experience
because it gave me an inkling of what
it's like to be on the end of some of my statements.
Some of you have probably had that experience.
So I decided to call this "The Editor".
"Your poems don't do enough for me,
he says, relaxing on the flowered sofa.
I've got to feel it in here, the soft finger, poking me.
Do I have to show him my X-rays?
He makes me feel even if I lose my head, inside a poem,
it's no good.
He likes to see my mind working in the poem.
But he doesn't like ideas.
Only his own.
That's too much fat in the third stanza.
Why don't you cut it?
I can hear him.
His scissors snipping away.
Do you have to cook your lines, he
says, basting them in stomach juices.
The rage life grows in you.
It's like dismantling a circus at the fairgrounds--
ropes, the big tent, all of it coming down.
Dog hairs, litter your manuscript,
bits of another man's life laid on you for nothing."
[LAUGHTER]