Wallace Stevens had more time to write as an insurance agent. He was a bond lawyer and I know that insurance company lawyers don't have to do nearly as much as we had to do. We were out more in the production area. I'm not condemning Stevens for having had a better job than I did, but that's one of the many places where I differ from him.

When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right.

My colleagues knew I was writing poems. I never hid it from them. I don't think they ever thought I was cheating on them. So, I think they probably saw it as being rather peculiar, that I was doing that sort of thing, but nobody ever suggested I shouldn't be doing it. I think that would be different on Madison Avenue or Wall Street, where you're really expected to be doing 110 percent for the company.

There are mornings when everything brims with promise, even my empty cup.

For a while the creative writing community sort of sprung out of places like Iowa and Syracuse. The graduates sort of went out, and they would found creative writing departments in the little colleges where they went, and then some of those would found other ones. I mean every college has got a creative writing department, so where are the jobs coming from? There are not any jobs out there.

A poem is a record of a discovery.

a happy birthday this evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride the day down into night, to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable page with the pale gray ghost of my hand