I have been treated better than I should have been---not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women.

Angels, we have grown apart.

Some of my poems indicate that I am writing while living alone after a split with a woman, and I've had many splits with women. I need solitude more often when I'm not writing than when I am.

In my next life I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.

but as God said, crossing his legs, I see where I have made plenty of poets but not so very much poetry.

and the color in my eyes has gone back into the sea.

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being... Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.