Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.

I didn't choose poetry: poetry chose me.

As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n 'tradition' or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people.

The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.

Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.

I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.

All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.