And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

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

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

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.

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.

People haven't got the interest in long long works these days. A lack of interest which I share.

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.