The word and the shadow of the word / makes a thing both itself and something else / till we are metaphors and not ourselves . . .

I know when dark-haired evening put on her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back.

Americans are not brought up with meter. They're not brought up with poetry. If you try to get them to recite, they're too embarrassed.

The truth is that the poems are ecstatic.

The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.

When you get a class reciting some great poems, it'll tear your heart out.

I look in the mirror. There's me. What's in the mirror is not real. So am I unreal?