Valentine's Day is the poet's holiday.

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.

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.

Keeping a journal is like taking good care of one’s heart.

If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really like. There are some poets who are fairly big names in contemporary poetry and who write a book and I might like three or four poems in the book, but the rest of them don't appeal to me personally; but I think that's the way it really ought to be. I think it's really a rare thing to like everything that somebody has written.

Every time somebody writes a theory about where literature's going, that person is not only contributing thought but nudging things to happen in one way or the other. Just as in painting, there's much more interest in the American scene painters and the early American... like the Ashcan school of painters. Who would have thought, 50 years ago, that Norman Rockwell would again be considered a serious painter? And yet, there are a lot of people who are saying Rockwell was a very accomplished technician. These things are constantly moving.

I like the idea of there being times when even words cost so much you used them sparingly. I have known a lot of old men and women who talked as if they were paying Western Union by the word.