You aren't just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!

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

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'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

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

I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them.

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!