For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.

The poem is itself a mirror.

How can I turn from Africa and live?

Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves.

You can't write drunk.

Who cares about a kid from the Midwest writing pentameter? It's stupid.

The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself.