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.

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

Detachment produces a peculiar state of mind. Maybe that's the worst sentence of all, to be deprived of feeling what a human being ought to be entitled to feel.

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

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

The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie.

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