“Basically, when I hear it now, I don't recognize myself directly in a lot of cases. I was expecting more menace. And the fact that it didn't seem menacing at first troubled me. Then I thought, What the hey, you know? I'm 66 years old, and I could just crack open a beer and listen to it, and it doesn't trouble me that it doesn't kill. Once upon a time, it probably would have.” KnowsYearsFirstsFactsSeemsCasesTroubleHeyBeerCracksExpectingMenaceOnce Upon A TimeHey YouExpecting More Author:Richard Meltzer
“If I looked at some of these pieces as if this project was not spoken-word but just short anthology, I probably would have fussed with some of the sentences, you know? Syllabication and prosody and such crap. Because the printed word is etched in stone. But for reading purposes I accepted this book of texts in the manner in which I wrote them, no need to fuss. Most of the shorter stuff was written as poetry. Meaning lots of white space on the page.” IfsKnowsNeedsBookPurposeReadingStuffSpaceWhitePiecesWrittenProjectsPagesStonesSentencesAcceptedCrapPrintedSpoken WordAnthologyPrinted WordWhite SpaceProsody Author:Richard Meltzer
“I mean, what's thematic? How to put it? Going back to, like, 1980, when I started writing poetry. Language itself became an issue. I'd even think about font as an aspect of text, you know, how something looks on a page. A lot of this is the product of a very solitary existence, it's like, language, I mean, you know. A lot of time spent alone in the creation of all of this stuff.” ThinkingKnowsWritingLooksMeanLanguageStuffExistenceKnow HowIssuesCreationProductsPagesAspectSolitaryWriting PoetryTime SpentFontsThematic Author:Richard Meltzer
“The first five years as a writer, I didn't know how to write at all. I couldn't write my way out of a white paper bag. And yet, I did some remarkable things. And later on, there were periods where I got this mission to find an articulate voice with rewrites and all. There were periods where I was as dense as Faulkner.” KnowsWayWritingYearsFirstsVoiceWhiteKnow HowFivePeriodsPaperMissionsMy WayFive YearsBagsRemarkableDensePaper BagsWhite Paper Author:Richard Meltzer
“One of the things about me is that I actually had marginally middle-class living from writing. For years and years, I actually wrote so much through the '70s and '80s that I made a living. And very rarely have I had to take another job. And now it's impossible for anybody coming up to make such a living. They've pissed in the temple, you know?” KnowsWritingYearsMadeJobsClassImpossibleMiddleTemplesMiddle Class80s Author:Richard Meltzer
