I wrote The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God in five hours but I had it all planned out. It isn't poetry and it does not pretend to be but it does what it sets out to do.

For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.

I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation.

I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats.

That's one of the great things about poetry one realises that one does one's little turn - that you're just part of the great crop as it were.

I was excited by what my painter friends were doing and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too and that was a wonderful little fizzy sort of world.

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

I heard Nirvana and discovered that songs could be like poetry but a little bit more refined: you didn't have to have 20 verses to get your point across.

Well I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it it was my great refuge through adolescence.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry as such.