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.

All poetry comes from repetition.

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

It takes a long time to publish a book.

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.

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.