Poetry is a purging of the world's poverty and change and evil and death. It is a present perfecting, a satisfaction in the irremediable poverty of life.

All history is modern history.

The imagination is one of the forces of nature.

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.

A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and…

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

Sometimes it is hard to criticize, one wants only to chronicle. The good and mediocre books come in from week to week, and I put them aside and read them and t…