I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.

Has the painter not always gone to an art school, or at least to an established master, for instruction? And the composer, the sculptor, the architect? Then why not the writer? Good poets, like good hybrid corn, are both born and made.

To eat in the same room where food is cooked - that is the way to thank the Lord for His abundance.

I wanted to write poetry almost a little more than I wanted to eat.

Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid.

For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.