The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers

One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.

Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.

Does God judge us by appearances? I Suspect that He does.

To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.

You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.