One is always nearer by not keeping still.

We tend to put poems into factions. And it restricts our reading.

I work best in rhyme and meter. I was most confident of myself in that way.

We learned in the university to consider Wordsworth and Keats as Romantics. They were only a generation apart, but Wordsworth didn't even read Keats's book when he gave him a copy.

I was reading the poems of Rochester. Rochester made himself out to be bisexual, but I think that was only to shock. Most of his poetry is sexual, even pornographic.

I was at a benefit for some imprisoned students in the '60s at San Francisco State, and there were lots of poets reading for the benefit: one was Elizabeth Bishop.

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.