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.

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

I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

To be an American is not...a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea--and history is the image of that idea.

The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see.

Then after a long time Annie wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a big girl and I was so much in love with her that I lived in a dream. In the dream my heart seemed to be ready to burst, for it seemed that the whole world was inside it swelling to get out and be the world. But that summer came to an end. Time passed and nothing happened that we had felt so certain at one time would happen.