I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.

When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been.

These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.

It's very hard to write humor.

I don't really think it will make much difference to me when I'm dead whether I'm read or not . . . just as whether I'm dead or not won't mean much to me when I'm dead.

Each moment is a place you've never been.