The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.
Poetry is the enemy of the poem.
Not that you need to be a saint to have visions worth talking about. The most effective prescription, I suspect, is to be a disciplined sinner. Perfection, as Valery noted, is work.
Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.
My mother never forgave my father
A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed.