Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.

Maybe there are three or four really good poets in a generation.

Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant to be looked at for all time.

I got married, other people went off. We had sort of another public-we were our entire readership for many years, and we were very excited by each other.

This rose became a bandanna, which became a house, which became infused with all passion, which became a hideaway, which became yes I would like to have dinner, which became hands, which became lands, shores, beaches, natives on the stones, staring and wild beasts in the trees, chasing the hats of lost hunters, and all this deserves a tone.

As I look over my work, I mean every time I look over my early work, I see, yes, I could do that then and then I could do that and that... That may be the hardest thing for a writer, at least for a poet, to tell what the identity of his work is.

I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.