I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.

Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.

There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.

Things go away to return, brightened for the passage

In nature there are few sharp lines

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without