[old interview] Where is our home key, anyway? (1999): Before I discovered blank space, or had any use for it. Other people’s poems were like swans carved out of butter, or something. My things looked dense, uncompromising, undifferentiated. The 'brick' was to suggest utility, interchangeability, compactness, aggressiveness even. I began by despising most poetry for being archaic and mindless and ornamental and unnecessary. Of course, a lot of it still is.
'Body Heat' originally from Nights in the Iron Hotel (1983):
This evening belongs to a warmer day--
separated clouds, birds, bits of green...
We wake late, naked, stuck to each other:
the greenhouse effect of windows and bedclothes.
Fifty years late, you finish Love on the Dole.
--Who knows, perhaps it can really be done?
The Boots hair-setting gel no longer works;
your pecker is down. The underdog's leather jacket
is here to stay, the stubborn lower lip
of the disconsolate punk...The poor hedgehogs,
they must help each other to pull off the leaves
that covered them while they were hibernating.
