On writing

What dance is to movement, essays are to thought

There is a moment in Philip Glass’s memoir, Words without music, when he works as assistant to the sculptor Richard Serra.

“You know, Richard, I wish I could draw,” says Glass. “I can’t even draw a tree.”

“I can help you with that,” says Serra.

“Really? How?”

“I’ll teach you to ‘see’ and then you will be ... See more

Books are disruptors. Books are questions. I’m not talking about How To Manuals that pretend to give us answers. I’m talking about the noisy row that breaks out in our heads when we have to think past ourselves

Poetry likes that kind of intelligence. Poetry likes the rhythms of your body and the movements of your body. I realized that, for me as a poet, the more physical intelligence I could put in my poems, the better they were.

That’s because the one thing we have in common is the same body. We have hearts and lungs, and the kind of rhythms of living are... See more

I learned something when I came here. I'll be working on something, and I'll come to an impasse. I'll say, “I don't know where this poem is going.” Or let's say I'm writing the libretto for an opera, and I won't know what these two characters are going to do.

I'll go out and I'll prune a tree for an hour, cut away the dead wood—and things like that.... See more