When you're going through something whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody you often feel like 'Oh my God I'm so overwhelmed I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact poetry's a nice reminder that no everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

In science one tries to tell people in such a way as to be understood by everyone something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry it's the exact opposite.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere but putting it on paper is alas not so easy as looking at it.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

Every single soul is a poem.

Everything one invents is true you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.