Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.

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

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

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

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -henceforth?- the subject to which you are condemned.

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

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.