My teachers were often very eccentric.
It was really hard coming to terms with the Nazi history. Then in my twenties I was traveling to Germany. There was a lot of poetry activity and some of my first readings abroad and trying to relate with people my own age there and what they were discovering and learning had to examine in terms of their backgrounds. Then so many of my friends had family who had either perished in the holocaust or survived in the holocaust. It was very palpable.
When I look at my life there are these streams, these things that have continuity from the fifties to now.
As a younger person you can come in through many, many gateways. It's like some huge Mandela. You can enter into this and get refreshed.
I think the idea of the lone tormented artist - which we can apply to others - I think that it needs to be revisited. Jack Kerouac needs to be seen in the context of a lot of other artistic activity.
[Jack] Kerouac looking at the fellaheen worlds. Looking at other cultures. Welcoming it, curious. Really stepping outside his own limited, whatever that narrow world was. It's amazing to think we can do it. We can have that same kind of trajectory of mind.
Connection to Buddhism is strand in my life.
The sense of traveling this continent, also other continents. The friendship.I would say a non-competitive friendship. That is so amazing to me.
"I am a self-appointed ambassador for poetry."
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