The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.

How terrible the need for God.

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.

I can't go on flying apart just for those who want the benefit of a few verbal kicks. My God, do you know what poems like that cost? They're not written vicariously: they come out of actual suffering, real madness.

Art is our defense against hysteria and death.

In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write.