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

I certainly have the feeling that I'm the same person even though I've changed a great deal.

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!

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.

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.

I never thought of myself as a New York poet or as an American poet.