“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.”

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

“If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.”

“Anything that is not autobiography is plagiarism.”

“But you can't fault me on my footnotes. I've worked hard on them and they look pretty impressive. And almost all the sources I quote actually exist. I must confess, however, that the idea of putting footnotes in chapter 5, the autobiographical chapter, started out simply as a joke. Who but a biblical scholar would think of footnoting an autobiography? But the joke quickly got out of hand and become a significant part of that chapter. I plan someday to write a scholarly article consisting of a single sentence and a twenty-page footnote.”

“Poetry is no rocket science, a good poet writes from his heart!”