I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them.

You aren't just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.

Summer in the trees! “It is time to strangle several bad poets.

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!

Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.

Poetry is a deliberate attempt to make language suggestive and imprecise.

One trouble with a kind of falsely therapeutic and always reassuring attitude that it is easy to fall into with old people, is the tendency to be satisfied with too little.

I got married, other people went off. We had sort of another public-we were our entire readership for many years, and we were very excited by each other.

Most poor people in America were like Arleen: they did not live in public housing or apartments subsidized by vouchers. Three in four families who qualified for assistance received nothing.

I think it is a good thing that the Trinity is confusing If it weren't, we wouldn't have the desire to learn more.

My son is a tree surgeon and gets me a lovely tree. I like to put it up early, as I can't wait for Christmas. We dress it with decorations that have been in the family for years.

Reality is overrated to me. Everyone spends enough time on the computer, eating, going out to bars. Why do I need to read a book about that?

Because we call ourselves Christians, our actions need to reflect Christ.

Maturity in the Christian life is measured by only one test: how much closer to his character have we become?

From the Far Eastern perspective, 29 is considered a very special age.

I knew Kathy Joosten; we worked together on a very short-lived series called Thanks for CBS.

Culture opens the sense of beauty.

What has Rock and Roll ever done for us? Everything.