I'm afraid we live at the mercy of a power, maybe a God, without mercy. And yet we find it, as I have, from others.

If that voice that you created that is most alive in the poem isn't carried throughout the whole poem, then I destroy where it's not there, and I reconstruct it so that that voice is the dominant voice in the poem.

But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.

Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme...they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn't expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, 'That is truly what I felt.' That is truly what I saw.

My earliest poems were a way of talking to somebody. I suppose to myself.

I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.