Kevin views his poetic reponsibilities as a poet as educative. At Harvard, he has read with the Nightpeople, the Quarterly, and Adams House. He also once read to a crowd of 1200 people in Memorial Hall at the 1990 Cultural Rhythms Festival. And while he was in San Fransisco, he read at two local cafes. He enjoy the audience feedback, when he actually gets it." But I hate when people s me what a poem's about. I usually just say, 'What do you think it's about?" he says. "Really, I don't know if I could tell you what it's about, or it might not even be about that anymore... There are as many rights as there are people. There are only a few wrongs."

"[Poetry] is not this superstitious, magical thing--it needs to be demystified," Kevin says. "When people read poetry, they can understand it. The problem is that people is that people have these preconceptions that they won't understand it." He draws analogies between appreciating poetry and learning to read. "It's like anything, and it's be a pretty scary world if we all stopped trying before we could do something. I never thought what I did was different from what anyone could do or would do."

Kevin ridicules the ideas that poetry is merely an act of inspiration--he complains that the Wordsworth stereotype of poets composing as they wanders the misty moors still predominates. On average, he spends about four or five months revising a poem. He describes the process as "the words [lifting] off the page." Most of his poems take their true from in revision. "You want to put the lid on [a poem], but it keeps knocking the lid off," he says. "Finally, the words just kind of get stuck."

When Kevin talks, it seems as though he is constantly revising himself. he tugs at his the top of his hair as though he were waiting for his last declaration to reverse itself, as though he were waiting for repeats questions before he answers them and he always seems vaguely dissatisfied with the answers. When he defines poetry, he says, "I think it's work. Is it art? I think it's best described as a vocation." He decides, finally, that it is something he works at. "I guess most people would say that I write a lot.. You're only a poet after you're finished a poem. Before that, you're just writing."

It is only with considerable practice and with nearly nine years of writing that Kevin has mastered the act of confidence. "It wasn't until last summer that I accepted I might be good at it," he says. "I was writing despite myself."

Poetry is ambition for language, and Kevin has his own ambitions for the medium. "I think poetry is political and useful and fascinating, " he tells me. When I ask him if he ever question the social value of literature, he answers immediately. "[Poetry] is not something that's taking away from service--I think it's problem of liberal guilt about writing, and I just don't feel that," he tells me. "I mean, both my parents are in health care. They do service all day, but that doesn't mean that they don't want to come home and read my poems."

The glitch in writing poetry, then is the problem of finance. When I ask Kevin if he plans to be a poet supporting himself with his writing alone he says, "I don't think there is any such beast. Even Seamus [Heaney] teachers and lectures." He laughs when I ask him if he wants to be famous. "Do I want to be famous? Well, I'm not going to be rich In a way, it's reassuring that no one cares about poetry," he answer. "But I'd like to be know, and to keep writing think if I said tomorrow 'I'm going to stop writing poetry." comes whether I like it or not, and I've learned to like it."

We talk then for a while about the lost writers we know, about students we have met who freelanced for a year before surrendering to law school, or students who abandoned writing before graduate. I hate when people stop writing. It's always sad," he tells me. "It's more than the economic times, it's conservatism, blah, blah, blah.. Sometimes, I'm surprised I'm still doing it."

But ultimately, Kevin is a symbol of being found. Of creating a home for himself and for his family and for other readers and writers in poetry. Of using words to give identities and ideas a place. And then the publishing and the prestige become incidental. "On planes and shit, when people ask me what I do, I say 'I guess I write poems,"" he tells me. "And they say, 'Oh, do you do that on the side?" On the side? What is that ? write poetry, and then I live on the side."