A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest.

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.

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

I don't think of myself all the time.

I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry.

Well, I love fishing. I wouldn't kill a fly myself but I've no hesitation in killing a fish. A lot of men are like that. No bother. Out you come. Thump. And that's not the only reason.