If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.

An English poet writes, I think, just for people who are interested in poetry. An American poet writes, and feels that everyone ought to appreciate this. Then he has a deep sense of grievance . . .

One of my great surprises when I was in America was about twenty-five years ago in Harvard, hearing Randall Jarrell deliver a bitter attack on the way poets were neglected. Yet there were about two thousand people present, and he was being paid five hundred dollars for delivering this attack.

Never being, but always at the edge of Being.

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.

I think of those who were truly great. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.

Paul Valery speaks of the 'une ligne donnee' of a poem. One line is given to the poet by God or by nature, the rest he has to discover for himself.