The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures.

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

Dying--shucks! If you kin handle the living, what's to be afraid of the dying?

If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it...if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you.