“For what is the point ofhaving something lovely if you never share it?It would be like having a poem, a beautiful wild poem that noone else has, and burning it.”

“A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. ”

“What is the point of having something lovely if you never share it?”

“If we leave that general descriptive talk where everything which looks like a poem can be called a poem and turn instead to normative talk, we will of course not recognize as a poem everything that looks like a poem. A real poem has to be a successful poem, a successful speech act. In approximately the same way that only a mathematical proof which really proves something can be called a mathematical proof. It is not enough that it looks like a proof. The proof has to prove. For the poem it is not enough to look like a poem. It has to achieve something.”

“More or Less Love Poems #11:No babeWe'd neverSwing together butthe syncopationwould be something wild”

“I never liked the term “experimental writing,” but what else is a prose poem? Having written a number of them, I still don’t know how they’re written.”