Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices a rottenness begins in his conduct.

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art in poetry in music of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful moving or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.

Clarity clarity surely clarity is the most beautiful thing in the world A limited limiting clarity I have not and never did have any motive of poetry But to achieve clarity.

Well if this is poetry I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

Poetry says the things that I can't say. I read a lot but I never write it.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

It all has to do with art - writing painting things I've done for a long time but just never had enough time to pursue. I have poetry - things that are designed for songs but they're always poems first.

But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea but of course I never really much got the chance to do it.

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and yes read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate or just never come back I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much and so I just went.

I have always written poetry but I have never applied it to songwriting.

I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me.

But I am not political in the current events sense and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.

Never fear: Thank Home and Poetry and the Force behind both.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things but they are the state of human existence.

I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to what they were doing why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

All those authors there most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side that's the prose side that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen but rarely what the poet wants.

I never thought I'd be doing poetry books. I never really studied poetry. But the first one I did was after my mother died and I realized that people sort of think and talk about her style and fashion but in fact what made her the person she was was really her love of reading and ideas.

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

I never really liked poetry readings I liked to read poetry by myself but I liked singing chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.

Poetry is the work of poets not of peoples or communities artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.