Cut quarrels out of literature and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

When I was in college I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

I've written poetry since I was in the first grade and it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I realized poetry could be put to music and become a song.

Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport the public to its loss reads very little of it.

Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being to which we rarely penetrate for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

I like poems that are little games.

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end the poem is not a thing we see-it is rather a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

There are things that I invented - the creaky geriatric robot that is always grumpy for example or the little wheelie guy he's not in the Hasbro lore. But kids love that stuff - this little guy as a pet on a chain. They gravitate towards it.

I used to have this little mouse. I buy birds from the pet store and I let them go.