There are not many poets whose fame rests on a single work.

I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. Hes very original, very accurate and acute.

I liked teaching Henry James. When you look down at a Henry James novel from a helicopter height, you find an intricate spider web that all clings together.

One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.

I do not give the honorific name of 'poetry' to the primitive and the unaccomplished.

A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.