“He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps.”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.”

“Poets are excellent students of blizzards and salt and broken statuary, but they are always elsewhere for the test. Any intention in the writing of poetry besides the aim to make a poem, of engaging the materials, SHOULD be disappointed. If the poet does not have the chutzpah to jeopardize habituated assumptions and practices, what will be produced will be sleep without dream, a copy of a copy of a copy.”

“Who can ever say the perfect thing to the poet about his poetry?”

“Nothing fills the world quite as poetry does. A poet need not dwell on the pagecount of his life.”

“If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.”