I'm sure that writing isn't a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can't be taught, it can't be what you use in teaching.

Most poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did.

Middle Age At forty-five, What next, what next? At every corner, I meet my Father, My age, still alive.

September twenty-second, Sir, the bough cracks with unpicked apples, and at dawn the small-mouth bass breaks water, gorged with spawn.

The world is absolutely out of control now and is not going to be saved by any reason or unreason.

I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where The wind is westerly, Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly Into the apparitions of the sky, They purpose nothing but their ease and die Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea.

In the end, every hypochondriac is his own prophet.