Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.

I don't ... like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'

When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leaf to turn away from the sun -- it loves it there. There's nothing so spiritual about being happy but you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last.

But it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it.

Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.

I wouldn’t want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days!

The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it.