"The Enemy is Words, Words, Words'

Thanks to Dave Lull for passing along a link to this interview with the great poet Samuel Menashe at Nextbook. Here's a sample:

"The enemy is words, words, words. I struggle—it’s a kind of perfectionism. I’ll work on a poem the whole summer, and by the end, it will have three lines less. I’ll even take out words from poems that have already appeared in books. Somebody once met me at a party and when I sent him a poem, he couldn’t believe the contrast between my voluble talking—or being articulate if you want to put it more nicely—and the voice of my poetry."