“If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.”

“I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is.”

“It is difficultto get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lackof what is found there.”

“A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/...the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound.”

“Fools have big wombs.”

“It is at the edge of the petal that love waits”

“This is Just to Say I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold”