Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.

Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.

...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense.

I don't have principles. I have nerves.

Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.

After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.