Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose?

I have a plot, but not much happens.

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.

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

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

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

I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem.