Language play is word play, and I always use that expression
word play. And that’s exactly what it is. I don’t think that I ever thought consciously about that. I just was in love with my words from the time I was tiny and had my little books of fairy tales. And in thinking about it, I think that one of them was by Walter de la Mare called Told Again. And I’ve gone back to that book and expresses himself so beautifully. And I think with that as a model of what language should sound like.
And then I had a Hans Christian Anderson translation, and that, too, was written very beautifully in a very quirky way sometimes. And I think some people — the more they’re finding out about the brain, the more they’re finding out that we have different pensions and that different people respond differently to different parts of culture, etc. And I guess that I was a word and rhythm responder. And no one knocked it out of me so I was able to go on with it because I made up songs and stories from the time as far back as I can remember. I’ve always been doing that long before I knew how to write.
I’m sure there are writers who are not great readers and just have a great talent of their own, but I think that you’ll find that most writers are great readers and it certainly can’t hurt you. And the more you read and the more you get these templates for what can be done and the more you experiment. And with me, I see a poem that I like and I’ll emulate the rhythm or I’ll try to write it in the form that it’s been written. These are wonderful games. They’re exercises. I think of them as games, like crossword puzzles or something. And I know that that’s helped me. It’s helped with analyzing poems and seeing how they’re put together. They’re an artifice and you see how they’re put together. And that’s always been a great joy.