Greatest Living Poet

* Wondering why interviews with poets are a huge waste of time?

"I read the dictionary for fun," she confesses.

"Scientific language often has its roots in Latin, so as a writer I'm really intrigued by it."

"I have really keen hearing. I'm crazily attentive to everything."

"I think of a line of poetry being a tightrope. I like to let it out and rein it in. The really long lines in some of the poems mimic the prairie horizon."

"Isn't all writing supposed to be experimental? Doesn't everyone strive to do something new?"

"I'm still stuck on page 825 of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy."

They must not have been rolling tape when the poet mentions she also *dresses* herself each morning. And how proud she is of that daily triumph.

***

The only poet interview I ever liked was the one with Weiners in the back of his Selected Poems ("I wrote lean poems because I was starving, etc"). Because it was *very* funny. Everybody else (on Earth) is completely full of shit. I like poems better than I like people. And I might like your poems, too, if you don't talk me out of it by sounding like a substitute Junior High Arts and Crafts teacher.

Although it is funny to think that Canadian poets get interviewed *in a newspaper*. Like what are the chances of that EVER happening unless it's the token "Isn't Poetry Funny: Everybody Writes It But Nobody Really Cares About It and No One Is Buying It" April article to spurn on sales of The Dummies Anthology of Unchallenging Poems Featuring Epiphanies Had While Walking A Dog So You, Dear Anthology-Buyer, Can Feel A Lot Less Like a Complete Failure as a Human Being ed. by You Know Who.