He can't imagine the result of the mission because he never saw it.

A poet trains himself to stand out in a storm and be struck by lightning. If he is lucky enough to be struck six times, he becomes immortal. Randall Jarrell said it and he's right.

I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that.

To be precise and reckless: that is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

I need about one hundred fifty drafts of a poem to get it right, and fifty more to make it sound spontaneous.

I want you to hear a new version of Dueling Banjos. Anyone else is welcome.

I feel very happy to see the sun come up every day. I feel happy to be around. ... I like to take this day- any day-and go to town with it.