Two buckets were easier carried than one. / I grew up in between.

The next move is always the test.

In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.

Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

Harvard meant a lot in my writing life from the beginning, even though I didnt actually do much composition on the spot.