But Blake's voices returned to dictate revisions.

Each year the big garden grew smaller and Jane - who grew flowers by choice, not corn or stringbeans - worked at the vegetables more than I did. Each winter I dreamed crops, dreamed marvels of canning . . . and each summer I largely failed. Shamefaced, I planted no garden at all.

You think that their dying is the worst thing that could happen. Then they stay dead.

I want to sleep like the birds then wake to write you again without hope that you read me.

I don't know where a poem comes from until after I've lived with it a long time. I've a notion that a poem comes from absolutely everything that every happened to you.

If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.

If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be any good is to try to be as great as the best.