Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.

I like you; your eyes are full of language." [Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]

I am teaching... This year it's kind of like having a love affair with a rhinoceros.

... and my love stays bitterly glowing, spasms of it will not sleep, and I am helpless and thirsty and need shade but there is no one to cover me- not even God.

I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer!

Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.

Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.