"The trick naturally is what Duncan learned years ago and tried to teach us - not to search for the perfect poem but to let your way of writing of the moment go along its own paths, explore and retreat but never be fully realized (confined) within the boundaries of one poem. This is where we were wrong and he was right, but he complicated things for us by saying that there is no such thing as good or bad poetry. There is - but not in relation to the single poem. There is really no single poem...It was not my anger or my frustration that got in the way of my poetry but the fact that I viewed each anger and each frustration as unique - something to be converted into poetry as one would exchange foreign money. I learned this from the English Department (and from the English Department of the spirit - that great quagmire that lurks at the bottom of all of us) and it ruined ten years of my poetry."

Jack Spicer