The lame spoof about the Pope below is a spoof of myself. I was thinking: here Creeley has died and the newspapers are making a big deal about this MINOR POLISH POET. Where are their priorities? The spiritual leader of a billiion people or the spiritual leader of 1,000 contemporary American poets. The remark attributed to Ron Silliman is also fake, of course. If only the Pope had been a LANGUAGE poet! Now that would have been interesting. How tragic that he wasn't!

Milosz really did praise Wojtyla's poetry for its thoughtful reflection on Catholic dogma. And Wojtyla really did write a dissertation on San Juan de la Cruz, so I only had to stretch the truth a tiny bit.