The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there.

So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.

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

We've always had a tradition in America of hounding our artists to death. Look at the list of our great artists, you see a continual history of defeat, frustration, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction. The best poets of my generation are all suicides.

What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe

If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.

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