I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.

Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can't sing, I call a poem.

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.