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.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.

My temperament is not geared to that of a novelist.

Now I must wait and be still and say nothing I don't know, nothing I haven't lived over and over, and that's everything.

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

I started listening to music when I wrote when I had three sons at home.

For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion.