I do feel that a poem needs not just space, but, ideally, space around that space - space for meditation, reverie, subliminal link-ups. I sense that poetry happens at a level above or below intelligence. It doesn't come into being at a purely rational level.

A good poem is not completely a poem until it has received a critical response that grows out of the poem in an almost biological way.

I do feel that a poem needs not just space, but, ideally, space around that space - space for meditation, reverie, subliminal link-ups. I sense that poetry happens at a level above or below intelligence. It doesn't come into being at a purely rational level.

I hardly ever look at my published books.

Every Monday morning I try to remember to say "Thank you, Lord. I'm not at the Senior Staff Meeting."

I suppose that as you grow older some sense of an accumulating oeuvre is unavoidable.

Most poets' revisions are disastrous. They buckle and dent what was originally forged at a red-hot heat.