One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.

A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.