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

To have guilt you've got to earn guilt, but sometimes when you earn it, you don't feel the guilt you ought to have. And that's what The Firebombing is about.

To be precise and reckless: that is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

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.

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.

The New York Quarterly is an amazing, intelligent, crazy, creative, strange, and indispensable magazine.

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