Someone will always want to mobilize Death on a massive scale for economic Domination or revenge. And the task, taken As a task, appeals to the imagination. The military is an engineering profession.

Milton was the first person who really experimented with putting politics into sonnets.

I think it's true to say that in 1973 I could read every book of poems that was published in a year, and I did.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

If you were making poetry out of convictions - trying to convince other people - you were in the territory of rhetoric, and that wasn't the territory of poetry. I think that's pretty smart. I think that it doesn't need to be altogether true, but that was my starting place.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

As I started reading about it, I saw that at the beginning of the 19th century, outside of New England - which was an unusually literate place - practically no one could read or write. And even in New England, the overall rate was only about 60 percent. That still means four out of 10 people couldn't put their name to a will.