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

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

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

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

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.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.