3. I suppose the correction to my literary education began in California many years ago. There I relearned what it meant to read, think, and act. I still take the Olson and Creeley correspondence as the basis from which I write. Creeley’s refusal to stay still especially motivates my appetite for imperfect things. I prefer active form to perfected form, dynamic potential over a suitable eloquence. Joanne Kyger especially helped me see this—in her work and conversation. Philip Whalen likewise stressed the significance of attention in the enduring complexity of the field. The field is rhetorical potential—a range of possibilities made of existing perceptions, experiences, rationalizations, and imaginings that compose events and enable their slow realization in poetry. Kyger and others—Baraka, Dorn, Irby, di Prima in their ways, yes, especially—bring the force of inquiry to bear on the inventive act of writing.