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

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.

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

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

When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.

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.

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