Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.
W. S. MerwinI had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write
W. S. MerwinOf course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in the invisible morning
W. S. MerwinIf you can't bear what's happening to the natural world, if you can't bear the way we treat each other; if you can't bear wars, you just can't bear the whole idea of war, which is possibly unavoidable. But still, you resist it. Because you just hate our treating each other that way and causing that suffering.
W. S. Merwin