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.

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 teacher is a person who never says anything once.

A chronicle is very different from history proper.

I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early.

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.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.