The question that he frames in all but words is what to make of a diminished thing.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

I go to school the youth to learn the future.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

He says the best way out is always through. / And I can agree to that, or in so far / As that I can see no way out but through