“These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.They are only meant to terrify & comfort.”

“Dream Song 187Them lady poets must not marry, pal.Miss Dickinson—fancy in Amherst bedding hér.Fancy a lark with Sappho,a tumble in the bushes with Miss Moore,a spoon with Emily, while Charlotte glare.Miss Bishop’s too noble-O.That was the lot. And two of them are hereas yet, and—and: Sylvia Plath is not.She—she her credentialshas handed in, leaving alone two totsand widower to what he makes of it—surviving guy, &when Tolstoy’s pathetic widow doing her whung(after them decades of marriage) & kids, she decided he was queer& loving his agent.Wherefore he rush off, leaving two journals, & die.It is a true error to marry with poetsor to be by them.”

“There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).”

“You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.”

“Listen, for poets are feigned to lie, and I For you a liar am a thousand times . . . .”

“Springwater grow so thick it gonna clot and the pleasing ladies cease. I figure, yup, you is bad powers.”

“I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.”