Q&A …

… Being Prepared for Joy | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I didn’t like editing Poetry at first—or, more accurately, didn’t like being known as the editor ofPoetry. It didn’t accord with the “image” I had of myself, for one thing, but I also didn’t like negotiating the politics and personalities of the job, and I absolutely hated having to reject my friends. I would have resigned after two years had I not become sick. That trapped me—and, in a way, saved me. The great enemy for all of us is the “I” we interpose between ourselves and experience, the self we mistake for our soul. Nothing but difficulty destroys that “I.”