Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.

The language with which I make my poems has nothing to do with one spoken here, or anywhere.

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

They've healed me to pieces.

A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the –not always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

Death is a master from Germany.