To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth…but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.

We live on the circumference of a hollow circle. We draw the circumference, like spiders, out of ourselves: it is all criticism of criticism.

we shall know that we have begun to speak true by an increased hunger for true-speaking; we shall have the whole hunger only after we have given ourselves the first taste of it.

... whatever is not happening now is unimportant; it is merely curious.

Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep.

Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.

My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.