I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.

However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.

But you'd have a job to find many of my poems which would seem to be very influenced by a particular person.

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

Landscape is my religion. ...God in a green legend, I lean over the pool In a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood Before me in a cool cave roofed with branches And floored with a skin of water.

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.