If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.

You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind ON, but what you can't keep your mind OFF.

Only silence perfects silence.

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.