The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.

So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.

I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing.

The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year.

I've nothing against the Queen personally: I had lunch at the Palace once upon a time.

My body was braille for the creeping influences.

There is not built-in meaning to anything, we are free to add any meaning we choose to give it.