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

A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.

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.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

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.