I try to be realistic with students. And say that there's a good chance that they're not going to get a creative writing teaching job, that there aren't enough jobs to go around and the university faculties are cutting back on staff and that they may have to get some other kind of work. None of them wants to hear that, but it is true and I think I'm a good example for them of somebody who took the other route.

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.

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.

There's nothing wrong with delighting in what you do. In fact, most of the fun you'll have as a poet will come about during the process of writing.

In my work, I really try to look at ordinary things quite closely to see if there isn't a little bit of something special about them. I'm trying to make something as nearly perfect as I can out of words.

Sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

If you look at the Directory of American Poets and Writers, you know there are hundreds of poets in New York City. So therefore, just by specific gravity, it seems like a more significant place. Robert Wrigley is a poet who lives in rural Idaho - I think it's really back-country Idaho - and he writes beautiful poems.