Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

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

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.

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.

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

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.