The whole relationship between a writer's spiritual/emotional condition and the kind of wordstuff and form-making that's going on in his work is an interesting one. When I was an undergraduate, there was a glib notion around that there was no reason to suppose a bad man could be a good writer.

I don't miss teaching. I'm learning to take my time for myself.

Publication is rather like pushing the boat out; then the boat/book turns into a melting ice floe and you have to conjure a second boat which again turns into a melting floe under your feet. All the stepping stones that you conjure disappear under the water behind you.

Part of my gradual education of myself has been to think that there is a deep relationship between the nature of the creature and the worth of the art.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Once I was on the job, once I had got started, I felt safe enough, but the anticipation made me tense.

To begin with, I wanted that truth to life to possess a concrete reliability, and rejoiced most when the poem seemed most direct, an upfront representation of the world it stood in for or stood up for or stood its ground against.