“I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is... In any case, I always thought that if the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water, the water was bound to reflect it. Hence my sentiment for water, for its folds, wrinkles. and ripples, and - as I am a Northerner - for its grayness. I simply think that water is the image of time, and every New Year's Eve, in somewhat pagan fashion, I try to find myself near water, preferably near a sea or an ocean, to watch the emergence of a new helping, a new cupful of time from it.”

“The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.”

“American poetry to me is a sort of relentless, nonstop sermon on human autonomy.”

“I am a patriot, but I must say that English poetry is the richest in the world.”

“The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse, be that in history, social studies or the art of fiction.”

“To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.”

“Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.”

“Poetry is not an art or a branch of art: it's something more.”

“My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume and be distributed in far greater volume, in far more substantial manner. You can sell in supermarkets very cheaply. In paperbacks. You can sell in drugstores.”

“American poetry is this country's greatest patrimony. It takes a stranger to see some things clearly. This is one of them, and I am that stranger.”

“Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.”