Poetry makes possible the deepest kind of personal possession of the world.

I don’t believe that a reviewer or a critic can really criticize well unless he can praise well.

What I want is to be willing to fail rather than stagnate.

What a view, i said again. The river was blank and mindless with beauty. It was the most glorious thing I have ever seen. But it was not seeing, really. For once it was not just seeing. It was beholding. I beheld the river in its icy pit of brightness, in its far-below sound and indifference, in its large coil and tiny points and flashes of the moon, in its long sinuous form, in its uncomprehending consequence.

I want a fever, in poetry: a fever, and tranquillity.

There ain't nothin' to dyin', really. You just get tired. You kind of drift away.

Poetry is a hazardous occupation, very hazardous. There may be bad things in there inside you that maybe you can't handle.