“The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes”

“The first year was like icing. Then the cake started to show through …”

“There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.”

“I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.”

“The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.”

“How many people came and stayed a certain time,Uttered light or dark speech that became part of youLike light behind windblown fog and sandFiltered and influenced by it, until no partRemains that is surely you.”

“Walter Pater said that all the arts aspire to the condition of music, but I’ve always felt that music aspires to the condition of words.”

“A little bunny or some kind of ferret was probablythere too, and bore witness as only rodents can.”

“I'm heading for a clean-named placelike Wisconsin, and mad as a jack-o'-lantern, will get therewithout help and nosy proclivities.”

“The music brought us what it seemed / We had long desired, but in a form / so rarefied there was no emptiness of sensation”

“until only infinity remained of beauty”