I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

I don't think of myself all the time.

And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

I'm very gregarious, but I love being in the hills on my own.

When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.

I just didn't want to shoot other people.

And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.