Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is.

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

Dance, vaudeville, drama, movies - as a child I loved everything that went on in a theater.

My earliest poems sing of the absolute necessity of allowing love to invade and pervade one's life. That can make the miracle happen in reality. Try it.

For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic.

Most poets, like most people, try hard to be like someone they admire or they are possessed with an image of what they ought to be.

A born poet knows in his cradle that a poetic life is the only life worth living.