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

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

Corruption is subtle, just like the Bible said. Many young poets have come to me and asked, How am I gonna make it? They feel, and often with considerable justice, that they are being overlooked while others with less talent are out there making careers for themselves. I always give the same advice. I say, Do it the hard way, and you’ll always feel good about yourself. You write because you have to, and you get this unbelievable satisfaction from doing it well. Try to live on that as long as you’re able.

Listen to these young poets and you'll discover the voice of the present and hear the voice of the future before the future is even here.

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.

I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don't come back.

I say, Father, the years have brought me here, still your son, they have brought me to a life I cannot understand.