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.

How weightless/ words are when nothing will do.

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

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.

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

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

You have begun to separate the dark from the dark.