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

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.

In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.

Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself.

But that citizen's perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutality of the means by which the IRA were pursuing change was destructive of the trust upon which new possibilities would have to be based.

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