We do very little re-writing in the office. We often take on people who show great promise and who we hope will develop into somebody important and someone good.

I often feel I'm working in a vacuum, or in a country where few readers hear the sounds.

Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important.

It's all well and good to say that Germans were all responsible for the concentration camps, but I don't think they were. I think that was the work of a small group of fiends.

I think there is a great difference, in that when the poet is reading you get the whole personality of the person, especially if he's a good reader. Whereas a person just sitting gets what he puts into it.

Every now and then, I strike something that just goes click, you know, in my head. As Gertrude Stein used to say, it rings the bell, and I feel, this is great.

We do very little re-writing in the office. We often take on people who show great promise and who we hope will develop into somebody important and someone good.