It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.

I have a plot, but not much happens.

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.