My next project is to get back to that. Actually, to learn how to write poetry. Im not kidding. – Harry Mathews
Well, the great thing for me about poetry is that in good poems the dislocation of words, that is to say, the distance between what they say theyre saying and what they are actually saying is at its greatest. – Harry Mathews
Well, my relationship to America at the time I left was very limited. – Harry Mathews
Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing. It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift. – Harry Mathews
I never thought Id be doing poetry books. I never really studied poetry. But the first one I did was after my mother died, and I realized that people sort of think and talk about her style and fashion, but in fact, what made her the person she was was really her love of reading and ideas. – Caroline Kennedy