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

Once I start writing about something, it goes off rather fast, and sometimes details which might be interesting such as what the room looked like or what somebody said that was not exactly on the same subject tend to get lost.

I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s, I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife, who was very smart about poetry.

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

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

It's a well known thing that ordinary perceptions can have a strange aspect when one is travelling.

Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.