Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.

We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

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

A lot happens by accident in poetry.

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.