Baseball, because of its continuity over the space of America and the time of America, is a place where memory gathers.

For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always best. We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy village inside a glass paperweight.

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

The form of free verse is as binding and as liberating as the form of a rondeau.

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

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.

Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire to work hard at writing.