“Hours of insanity and escape . . . in which I write inadequate verse, read, rage . . . record anecdotes which fade into the page like stains . . . beat time with my pencil’s business end . . . nip at the loose skin on the side of my hand with my teeth . . . cast schemes and tropes like horoscopes . . . practice catachresis as though it were croquet . . . grrrowl . . . kick wastebaskets into corners . . . realize that when I picture my methods of construction all the images are architectural, but when I dream of the ultimate fiction—that animal entity, the made-up syllabic self—I am trying to energize old, used-up, stolen organs like Dr. Frankenstein . . . grrrind . . . throw wet wads of Kleenex from a spring or winter cold into the corner where they mainly miss the basket . . . O . . . Ohio: I hear howling from both Os . . . play ring agroan the rosie . . . pace . . . put an angry erection back in my pants . . . rhyme . . . Then occasionally perceive beneath me on the page a few lines which . . . while I was elsewhere must have . . . yes, a few lines which have . . . which have the sound . . . the true whistle of the spirit. Wait’ll they read that, I say, perhaps even aloud, over the water running in the kitchen sink, over the noise of my writing lamp, coffee growing cold in the cup, the grrowl of my belly. Yet when I raise my right palm from the paper where, in oath, I’ve put it, the whistle in those words is gone, and only the lamp sings. Till I pull its chain like a john.”