You certainly packed enough questions per square inch in your last E-mail -- somewhat like vacuum-dehydrated coffee -- but I will endeavor to foliate them, then answer all. You remind me of a similar intensity in myself thirty years ago, and at first I'm tempted to answer flippantly how the only cure for youth is for the patient to somehow traverse it. Get through it. Yet this reply would never have done for me when I was your age. So I'll press on . . .

I believe artistic drive is something that must be sublimated. If it's not, it flashes brilliantly then consumes itself. James Dean or Hart Crane come to mind. Or, this story: I had a friend in my early twenties who was also compelled to do poetry, yet he agonized over it. Maybe he should have never read The Agony and the Ecstasy, but you get the picture - a wild-eyed, struggling artist. As impassioned as he was about writing, I noticed he seldom produced a work. He would tear up a hundred pages to find two or three perfect words.

Don't get me wrong, you need this passion to be able to create. As before, I answer the question why one writes poetry - because you are compelled to do so. You have no other choice. But I also believe the next step after compulsion is to become attuned to the process itself. Is it agony? Or is it learning how to become a conduit?

And if poems are truly reverse prayers, one cannot rail against infinity and still be a receptor. If the 'don't think' concept has validity, then one has to learn how to channel the passion into a funnel. Your passions can swirl and become torrents, they can cascade and form currents, but they must never become impediments -- or to stay with this watery metaphor I've apparently swum into -- they must never become dams.

Next Question Answered - Yes, I appear to be accelerating with success. November has been a good month, and I've had six poems accepted, along with a request from a small publisher for a synopsis of one of my novels. I might be becoming more adept at submitting the poems. One of my confidantes pointed out 'Salem's Shot' was once named 'Peter Salem Shot a White Man,' but by placing the historical prose device at the bottom of the poem, it enabled me to shorten the title. Her point was I frequently use my titles to explain some of the history. I think she's right. 'Salem's Shot' went from pen to publication in less than three weeks. A record for me. Even earlier than 'Salem's Shot, though,' I had taken to explaining, or illuminating, the topics of my poems in my cover letters to editors. For instance, if I sent out 'Emily Chooses to Hide,' today, I'd write the editor, 'for your consideration, here's a poem concerning Emily Dickinson.'

Previously I thought it took some of the 'big W' out of the poem when I'd tell someone who it's about; but I now think it has increased the amount of acceptances by adding these descriptions to the cover letters.

Next Question - Are not poems best answers? Reply -- Yes. Indeed this is the whole idea, is it not? Any poet worth their salt had better be answering the basic questions of life. However this endeavor should not be confused with truth. Perhaps we are not meant to know of the truth; perhaps we are meant to produce grace from this human condition. And this is what poets do best - they produce grace. Grace is found in the answers we conjure. Grace is found in the balm we find. The truth, I'm afraid, will be found to be physics, and not the more graceful metaphysics.

Question from Long Ago - you asked me many Emails ago to enunciate my ideas concerning forgiveness. I haven't forgotten, but I haven't thought it all the way through yet to a succinct answer. I think it has something to do with the shock one feels when learning of Bishop Tutu's truth trials, then weeks later having the shock transmute into an understanding of grace. Perhaps forgiveness is the ultimate expression of the intellect. I'll get back to you on this one, once I can enunciate Joan of Arc's message of forgiveness.

Question - why do I feel as if I were writing to myself, playing a game with myself? Reply -- Is this not the whole idea also? If reverse prayers are coming from the beyond into the interior, could they not come from your own soul, that part of you still residing in the beyond? My advice is to practice at not thinking. See what happens when you clear your mind, then write the first thing that glides in. Don't worry about meaning. Look at what you've written, and wait for the next connected thought. Write it down. Frequently I'm not certain what the poem is about until I reach the middle of it. Frequently too, I'm amazed at how the end tailhooks into those first couple of lines that at first looked like nonsense.

Question - Why play this game at all? Reply - The game has selected you, so you probably have no choice but to play this hand. Remember, I somewhat abandoned it from age twenty to age forty-five as I upward-mobiled myself through this business career I'm in (while writing about five novels). But poetry jerked me back. Recently I've discovered another poet who went through a similar twenty year hiatus. Also I think a lot about these poetry frenzies some poets go through. So again, it selects you, no matter how you try to squirm away. Best advice - don't think, don't worry, allow it to yank you to the pen when it wants you. And try to avoid being like my buddy who was too agonized to produce.

Question - Who needs us to become a master at this game? Reply - one of my favorite questions. You do. You are the one who needs to become a master at this. The rest of the world can get on quite well without our poems. But if you are requested so kindly to engage this carving with bones, then you must give it your best. After all, in the end we just might come up with a poem that can deliver some grace to another human being or two. And then we have validated this trust that was put in us.

Statement - shutting the door on darkness and doubt. Reply - I'm not convinced, Andy, you're meant to shut this door. Once given the gift to open the door to inspect these demons, I think shutting the door is a good way to torment yourself. Look at how many writers flipped all the way out: Plath, Crane, Brautigan, Hemingway, come to mind in the first second or two; the list unluckily goes on and on. Maybe they struggled too vehemently against the darkness. I think, instead, we're meant to inspect the darkness and the doubt, then discover how to make grace of these supposed demons. It is this grace we are meant to deliver through our poems. Now we are exactly at the bone and indeed scrapping away with another bone - how to produce grace from disquieting existence. This is the task of the poet.

Question - What child calls to us faintly? Is that child real, or did I imagine her? Reply - Now you've slipped into poetry, at last. So I don't have to answer a poem, thank you.

However, I will point out that in your very Email you've underlined the process I've described above. You identified your own darkness and despair, you inspected and described it, you lamented a little bit, then you instinctively turned these potentially scary thoughts into a poem bearing grace.

It is quite an honor corresponding with you.

Best regards,

Ward