Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones gut this is only in part true.

I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era completely throw the poem into a different time scale.

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.

When I was in college I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet and he would set out in conscious determination on an epic poem.

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

You know bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet and you know there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them.

To this day I don't ever remember seeing a pet inside Moscow I never saw anyone carrying a dog or leading a dog. Err I finally saw a a pet some years later in Kiev so I thought that life must have been different.

I have a lot of plants and fish and a pet lizard and Venus flytraps. I have a whole ecosystem in my room like a running waterfall and different lights and sensors set on digital timers.

Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many different ailments but I have never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.