I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.

I am now seventy, rather glad, really, that I won't live to see the horrors to come in the 21st century.

I write, or used to write, to explain to myself situations I couldn't otherwise solve or understand. Meditation comes very naturally to me.

I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art.

You've got criminal courts and child welfare officials refusing to do their jobs and protect children so they can shift the cases over to family court where predatory professionals can turn a dirty buck off the atrocities committed against children.

I think a poet, like a painter, should be a craftsperson.

I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that without order or pattern poetry is useless.