The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

I often wonder if I am suffering from some mental dysfunction because of how weird and baffling my poetry seems to so many people and sometimes to me too.

One listens to a piece of great music, say, and feels deeply moved by it, and wants to put this feeling into words, but it can't be put into words. That's what - the music has already supplied the meaning, and words will just be superfluous after that. But it's that kind of verbal meaning that can't be verbalized that I try to get at in poetry.

Most reckless things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibilities that they are founded on nothing.