The poets needed to learn to pay greater attention to character and to narrative.

I would be happier if people who went through MFA programs also were already, by then, deeply committed readers of poetry because we need readers of poetry as much as writers of poetry.

So, the result though is by the time I've got something, it's been worked over so many times that although I do make changes as the end, often by the time I've gotten it, it's pretty much completed.

And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.

I have the idea that lyric poetry is a poetry that's driven by a sense of the presence of death. That there's something unbearable about the fact that we're going to die and that we can't stand it and I think you find that out in childhood and you don't really - at least I found it out in childhood and I found it hard to get over.

I would keep in mind to a young poet that you are entering into something that is very important, that has always been important in terms of human concerns.

First of all I think that poetry is very noble and I always have with me the sense of the nobility of poetry.