When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.

He thought that I was after him for a feather--- The white one in his tail: like one who takes everything said as personal to himself.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation.

I write to find out what I didn't know I knew.

If you remember only one thing I've said, remember that an idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor. If you have never made a good metaphor, then you don't know what it's all about.