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I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn’t that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I’d already been translating French poetry, I’d been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.
I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
In politics, as in poetry, it is sometimes true that it is darkest before dawn.
I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up.
The whole thing about making films in an organic film on location is that it’s not all about characters, relationships and themes, it’s also about place and the poetry of place. It’s about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across.
On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it’s differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.
My mother carried on and supported us her ambition had been to write poetry and songs.
Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.
My art and poetry is very political now. Because you’ve got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there, I know, there will be people who will listen.