One feature of my poetry . . . is that I frequently write what sounds like a perfectly straightforward statement in which one word is slightly wrong or unexpected, or the tense of a verb is changed from what it should be. These bumps, as I think of them, are an important aspect of my poetry. I’ve noticed with French translators that their first aim is to smooth them all out so that they actually sound like French poetry, and I’ve argued with translators over this. They invariably say, “But you can’t say that in French.” And I say, “But you can’t say it in English either.”