Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.
And Robert Lowell, of course - in his poems, we're not located in his actual life. We're located more in the externals, in the journalistic facts of his life.
I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.