Life's essential length is only a few pages long, as succinct as a line of verse and as brief as the title of a poem.

What I try to do is to keep emotion on a tight leash; otherwise, it can never be transubstantiated into poetry.

Life's essential length is only a few pages long, as succinct as a line of verse and as brief as the title of a poem.

Poetry relishes ripe fruit - but ripe is one thing and overripe quite another. That's something poetry doesn't like, so it couldn't care less if I were to fall overripe to the ground.

I don't aspire, but I would be very happy if one of my poems suddenly offered someone a shady rest stop, a breather in our interminable march under the murderous, scorching heat of the superfluous.

If anything needs love it is reality, for it is reality that lacks it the most - I doubt that it was ever loved.

Poetry contains love and holds it in high esteem, even though love always humiliates it by using it merely as a soothing after-shave lotion.