When I look at you with the eye of flesh
I feel a warm hand just above my pubis
and another in the middle of my back.
I see small creatures running in circles—
they race or dance—quick with pleasure.
I don't believe in inspiration as traditionally
conceived: that is, as having something to do with a god blowing an inspiriting
breath into the lungs of a poet, or a visitation by a muse. I agree with
critics, such as Harold
Bloom, who says that "poems beget poems." I read a lot of poems, read,
study, analyze, teach, think about, write out in long hand, and thus I am
inspired through the cultural mechanism of writing and reading: inspired by
literature.
