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

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

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.

William Packard surely must be one of the great editors of our time.

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

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

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.