...having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for.

from the beginning, through the middle years and up to the end: too bad, too bad, too bad.

I don’t understand people, never will. It looks like I got to travel pretty much alone.

It began as a mistake.

It was too much. The comfortable people made comfortable jokes about weather and things but I sat mostly silent saying a word or so when necessary a word or so trying to hide from them the fact that I was a fool and feeling terrible And I was numb, numb again, numb again again and again, numbness and pain swelling in me.

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it

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.