I do think the author ought to be able to give a good reason for the way things are in his poem. Not a bad question to ask oneself.

There are so many selves in everybody, and just to explore and exploit one is wrong, dead wrong, for the creative person.

Then you develop a kind of critical sense about what you write. You can tell when something is good, but it would be just as good in somebody else's work too. You want to hold out for those things only you can say.

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

It takes an awful lot of time for me to write anything. I have endless drafts, one after another; and I try out 50, 75, or a hundred variations on a single line sometimes. I work on the process of refining low-grade ore. I get maybe a couple of nu ggets of gold out of 50 tons of dirt. It is tough for me. No, I am not inspired.

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

The true feeling of sex is that of a deep intimacy, but above all of a deep complicity.