I am beginning to think of the human imagination as a fruit machine on which victories are rare and separated by much vain expense, and represent a rare alignment of mental and spiritual qualities that normally are quite at odds.

Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP

A good poem about failure is a success.

To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.

The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.

One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.

The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It's more like a desire to separate a piece of one's experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.