After his lecture-and-reading
at Franconia, New Hampshire's
Robert Frost Museum,
I asked Professor William Cook
of Dartmouth University
how I could make my poems better.
I was just sixteen.

Without hesitating, Dr Cook advised:
Begin with the object.

Begin with the object?
I was buzzed on Dylan Thomas,
drunk on the sound of the word,
so I was discouraged, a bit,
by what seemed prosaic advice---

but heartened, a few moments later,
when the credential'd academician
of bald brown head
and black beard turning white
proffered the compliment:
You ask the right questions!