You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.

The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language.

I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer.’ It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings.

Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.

Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits; they do not come to coo.

One critic wrote . . . that my poems sounded as though they had been translated from the Hungarian. I don't know why, but somehow that made me feel quite lighthearted.