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

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

Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.

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.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

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

Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals