And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.

I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.

The reality of a poem is a very ghostly one. It suggests, it suggests, it suggests again.

When we walk in the sun our shadows are like barges of silence.

From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.

The burial of feelings has begun.

When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been.

For some of us, the less said about the way we do things the better.

Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.

Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.