I want to apologize for plaguing you with so many telephone calls last November and December. When the 'enthusiasm' is coming on me it is accompanied by a feverish reaching out to my friends. After its over I wince and wither.

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.

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

We are all old-timers, each of us holds a locked razor.

Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.

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

Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event.