Scholars and artists thrown together are often annoyed at the puzzle of where they differ. Both work from knowledge; but I suspectthey differ most importantly in the way their knowledge is come by. Scholars get theirs with conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic; poets theirs cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books. They stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

All thought is a feat of association; having what's in front of you bring up something in your mind that you almost didn't know you knew

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.

All the fun is in how you say a thing.