Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

Bugs Bunny is my muse.

I was a pretty happy kid, I had to fake it. I had to get into this miserable character before I wrote poems.

There's a lot of unconscious activity that goes on I think in the composition of a poem.

I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue. If it does, I can feel a sense of momentum - the poem finds a reason for continuing.

You'll find i-poetry, you'll find that you can download poetry, that you can stuff your i-pod with recorded poetry. So just to answer the question that way, I think that poetry is gonna catch up with that technology quite soon.

Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.