Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.

Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

History is where tensions were.

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.

I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.

I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.