Too many poets write poems which are only difficult on the surface, difficult because the dramatic situation is easily misunderstood. It's not difficult to write poems that are misunderstood. A drunk, a three-year-old-they are easily misunderstood. What is difficult is being clear and mysterious at the same time. The dramatic situation needs to be as clear in a poem as it is in a piece of good journalism. The why is part of the mystery, but the who, what, where, and when should all be understood.
Most women seem to be required to pit themselves against men in dramatic situations, and the men got to pit themselves against ideas or God.
Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations.
A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
We have committed ourselves to pursue joint policies, but then national governments say, "We aren't bound by that. " That is a dramatic situation, because solidarity is a basic principle that cannot be had on an à la carte basis. If we have rules that nobody adheres to, then the community will break apart.
Portnoy's Complaint' was very far out there, and movies have always worked when you have either a funny situation between two or more people or a very dramatic situation. There's not that much difference.
We want to create these dramatic situations, whether they are real or not, to entertain audiences.
We're all impostors to ourselves. By that I mean that we know instinctively, intimately, the difference between whom we are inside and who we appear to be to others. Most of the time - when we aren't flat lying about something or playing a particularly stylized role in some heightened dramatic situation - this difference between the internal and the external is modest and manageable.
