Poetry is the one thing that isn't contaminated, the one thing that isn't part of the game.
Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.
Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.
The demand that poetry be immediately understandable to everyone is truly absurd.
If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?
Poetry is not a luxury.
Poetry is truth dwelling in beauty.
Poetry is good for unleashing images.
Poetry is when words are robbed of their attributed truth.
Poetry is an ongoing conversation with the past and the future and the present. I'm interested in that continuity, in that way of tying civilization together. It's like shoe laces, it holds things together.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.
Poetry is prose in slow motion.
Poetry is not a way of saying things; it's a way of seeing things.
Poetry is fired by love.
Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
My poetry is not lyric. The epigrams are lyric because they come from my youthful period of lyricism, but my other poetry is not lyric.
Poetry is when you talk to yourself.
I started with poetry because it was direct, immediate, and short. It was the ecstasy of striking matches in the dark.
We learn what poetry is - if we ever learn - by reading it.
The trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry.