Now, as I've gotten older I've been able to write more quickly. Sometimes I get in the space of something and I can do a lot in a day.

I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish poetry and other Eastern European poetry and reading Russian poetry and reading Latin American and Spanish poetry and I've always found models in those other poetries of poets who could help me on my path.

Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and the meaning of a poem takes place in the negotiation between the poet, the poem and the reader.

I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.

When you find it you become the secret addressee of a literary text and I felt that their reader had been left out of this experience of reading poetry or what the experience of poetry was.

There's never been a culture without poetry in the history of the world. In every culture, in every language there is expressive play, expressive word play, there's language use to different purposes that we would call poetry.

And sometimes you look at the first poems by someone and you go, "They have freshness and a sense of wonder that is never recaptured again by that poet."