Words seem like drops of water in a stream that has its own wholeness and its own motion.

The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity.

Poetry is what I've done my whole life. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems.

Some of us are darkness lovers. We do not dislike the early and late daylight of June, but we cherish the increasing dark of November, which we wrap around ourselves in the prosperous warmth of wood stove, oil and electric blanket. Inside our warmth we fold ourselves, partly tuber, partly bear, in the dark and its cold - around us, outside us, safely away from us. We tuck ourselves up in the comfort of cold's opposite, warming ourslves by thought of the cold, lighting ourselves by darkness's idea.

I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.

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.

To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content.