A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

Oh, I'm a martyr to music.

Dark is a way and light is a place, Heaven that never was Nor will be ever is always true "Poem on His Birthday

What I like to do is treat words as a craftsman does his wood or stone or what-have-you, to hew, carve, mold, coil, polish, and plane them into patterns, sequences, sculptures, fugues of sound expressing some lyrical impulse, some spiritual doubt or conviction, some dimly realized truth I must try to reach and realize.

I have just had eighteen whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record.

Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction.

Rage, rage against the dying light