I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry.

I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them.

I got married, other people went off. We had sort of another public-we were our entire readership for many years, and we were very excited by each other.

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.