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

There are three things, after all, that a poem must reach: the eye, the ear, and what we may call the heart or the mind. It is the most important of all to reach the heart of the reader.

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

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.

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.