I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound; but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

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.

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

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.