I’m 85, which taken by itself is no big thing. It doesn’t make me smarter or wiser or better or anything except older. But I do retain some of what I’ve experienced which most people still alive have either forgotten or never known. I may therefore be able to offer you some nuggets with a special shine, plus I retain some facts, long since distorted, inverted or lost in the sweep of history.

As I was growing up large vocabularies were not unusual. It may seem in these times that mine is huge. It’s not. My son Allan’s is bigger than mine. I hope you’ll approach my words with an eye to finding me entertaining or not, informative or not. Wonderful would be you’d find me exciting and even witty. But you’ll know soon enough if I’m your cup of tea.

I write to be read. That may seem tautological but it’s not. Many write for themselves, as reinforcement for their fantasies, a perverse snobbery. In these obscurantist days many write for just a close circle of friends with all kinds of arcane allusions in their work which they and few others can follow. I don’t exactly write for the slob on the block but I do try to make myself and my words accessible. My reasoning is: If you’re a writer and you’re not accessible why would you expect someone to burrow through the silt to find what may, but only may be there? I think accessibility is a golden rule.

Another golden rule is — you must have something to say. In these days of yellow smiling, sunny faces, where bad news has been abolished forever, and even the bad news that does get through gets a good spin, telling it like is as they say really goes against the tide. But if you have nothing to say who cares if you’re accessible? So: the demand I make on myself is to write on what I consider to be important subjects. As Evita says, that’s what you’re gonna get in me. Does it take hubris to say of one’s writing — hey — this is about an important subject. Well of course it does. First of all a writer would have to be crazy not to have hubris, faced with only a blank piece of paper and his own mind with almost no chance for gaining materially from what he’ll labor at without stint. He’d better have healthy hubris or he won’t sustain his own momentum. Besides — the trick in being a writer is to say to the reader — you’re in good hands with All State. Once the reader doubts the writer, forget it, he’ll close the page. So an important instant task for the writer is to make sure the reader will and has come along for the ride and will remain on board or else the writer really is writing for himself.

Another demand I make on myself is to say what I have to say not only clearly but artistically. That last is a stumbling block for many in these days when poetry must slam to be heard, where va-voom rules. After all, receptivity to art is subjective. Van Gogh never sold a painting while he lived. Talk about hubris. He did it anyway. Why? Because he had to. There may be the key. So I work hard, sometimes dozens of rewrites to be clear and artistic at the same time, for no recompense, but because I have to. If you don’t like it or don’t get it — hey — tough luck for me. Do I think I’m Van Gogh? Not yet. Might never get there. But the thrust is the same. The artist does it because he must. Surely not for money.

It should be clear to you that as I place demands on me I place demands on you. When we read Ulysses we can all get the story, Homer’s tale, set in Dublin 1920 or so. Nice conceit. But if we know the allusions — ah, the plays on words, sometimes on foreign words — well — the more we bring to it of course the more we get. And many of those allusions are not hard to come by at all for anyone who is what used to be called a well-read person. That demand on you is implicit in my work. Oh, I’m accessible anyway, even if you bring little to it. But there are layers there that you’ll appreciate if you come to it with something of your own.

For a notion of the kind of thing I write and my attempt at communication, here’s one from my new book, Stubborn Pine in a Stiff Wind. There’s nothing for it, as the poem says, but to make a partnership, you and I. You may tire of me, find me tendentious, lecture-y, over-political, intense. Well — you’ll walk away. (I’m told I can be funny.) But if we stay as partners I assure you I will bust my head to bring you garden fresh each day.