You had to come back to learn how to lose yourself, to be pilot and stray-witch, Hansel and Gretel in one.

Don't be surprised if I demur, for, be advised my passport's green.

The poems I did write there [in Harvard] include Alphabets the 1984 Phi Beta Kappa poem and A Sofa in the Forties. And, of course, the John Harvard poem for the 350th anniversary Villanelle for an Anniversary.

When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation.

I am not a playwright. A playwright would take "Antigone" and hit it a few clouts and knock it out of shape and restructure it. My versioning was strictly verbal.

I always believed that whatever had to be written would somehow get itself written.

The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.