A. Revision:

I often make alterations to individual poems but, in the 30 years that I have been keeping poems, some 6500 in total, I made no changes to most of my poems. No change was made to most poems after they were typed and printed. Perhaps what I do, in the end, is adhere to Robert Duncan’s approach: ‘I never revise a poem; I simply write a new one.’ I’ve always liked W.B. Yeats’ statement on revision: ‘know what issue is at stake/It is myself that I remake.’ If I analyse this question of revision I note that there are many permuations and combinations in regard to what actually happens when I revise a poem. At the age of 65, 50 years through my Baha’i life, I am at the two-thirds point, should I live to be 90. I can only watch, wait and see what policy evolves with respect to this business of revision. For now this brief statement will suffice.

B. Punctuation:

In reading Emma L. Roth-Schwartz’s “Colon and Semi-Colon in Donne's Prose Letters: Practice and Principle,” in Early Modern Literary Studies, Vol.3, No.1, 1997, I concluded that I have little interest in making statements about my use of punctuation for future literary scholars. There are dangers, of course, in inattention given to punctuation both by myself and future students. There is damage done to sense and style by repunctuation, mine and others, for punctuation must be seen as an act of interpretation. I find that I sometimes punctuate different copies of the same text differently. I certainly don’t feel tied to the punctuation that editors find in my work. Some writers do not want editors to change anything. I am not of that ilk. My hope is that future editors may yet come close to that happy state of affairs in punctuating my work, a state described by Francis Clement in 1587 in which he says that with punctuation "the breath is relieved, the meaning conceived, the eye directed, the ear delighted, and all the senses satisfied."1

Editors may come across all sorts of punctuation and word problems in going over my work. The occasional malapropism, that is the ludicrous misuse of a word especially by confusion with one of similar sound, may occur from time to time and that is easily fixed.-Ron Price with thanks to 1Anthony Graham-White, Punctuation and Its Dramatic Value in Shakespearean Drama. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1995, p.46.
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