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

It's enormously cheering to get a good review by someone who seems to understand your work.

I don't think the nature of my poetry is satirical or even ironic, I think it's essentially lyrical but again I don't know if it's my position to say what my poetry is like.

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.

Poetry is a deliberate attempt to make language suggestive and imprecise.

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

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.