When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.

at a certain moment in social proceedings, I am on FIRE to leave: I have a leaving-FIT.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man's shirt on its morning run.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.

People like definite decisions, / Tidy answers, all the little ravelings / Snipped off, the lint removed, they / Hop happily among their roughs / Calling what they can't clutch insanity / Or saintliness.

Writing is a delicious agony.