A certain kind of poetry looks back at experience from an older perspective.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's hard for me to think of any good fiction writers who don't also read poetry.

I just think that limits the kinds of experiences that people can have with poetry. But, poetry will survive; I don't worry about that. But, I do think that it may save fewer souls if people can't pay attention.

In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person.

The great post-Holocaust poet, Paul Celan, said that a poem is a message in a bottle sent out in the not always greatly hopeful belief that somewhere and some time it would wash up on land on heartland perhaps.

There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.