I don’t want to write the great American novel
And set people walking across the pages of a book
Doing things like sweating on page 4, praying on page 45,

I used to believe that nobody was really crazy.
That people were all basically good. Sometimes it was
A question of coaxing them, a little, but in the end

You have evil in this world as you have anything else.
I remember the first time I noticed someone was crazy.
It wasn’t interesting, really; I only wanted to leave

Trees, rocks, the animal and human kingdom
Are all passengers of my will. I treat them
As they treat me, loving the way I go on and on

You
and
me

my eyes—
back there
in the mirror

I seldom remember what
someone was wearing
what color their eyes are

I (the stone) go (don’t
blind you!              even 
                                  know

as my own noise’s, no
one’s,
listening,

 

Peaceful room,
peaceful blanket,
large pillow, cold,

The woman was involved with how she looked.
The man was busy writing.

French poets are the greatest of all.
They arrive with different smiles. 
They are used to the sun and to coffee. 

In the middle of night 
in Brightlingsea 

a man stands
on his
head one

The doorbell so
Lost
        in the wall, the telephone

Matthau would be ninety-four today. The poet Aram Saroyan, his stepson, spoke to him in 1974 about the vagaries of fame.This interview took place at the kitchen table in the Matthau household in Pacific Palisades between two and three thirty in the m…

In early 1989, I telephoned Daniel Fuchs (1909–93), then in his eightieth year, in Los Angeles to ask about the possibility of interviewing him for The Paris Review. The novelist and screenwriter—heralded for his Williamsburg Trilogy of the 1930s (Su…