I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).

Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.

That so much of our experience, or the stereotype which passes for it should be dealt with by means of the short story is perhaps a symptom not unnoticeable elsewhere in the public domain of an unlovely cynicism about human character.

The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.

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