It's very hard to write humor.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

The reality of a poem is a very ghostly one. It suggests, it suggests, it suggests again.

It's very hard to write humor.

I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.