Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.

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.

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 liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.

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

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

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