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I earn more than I thought I would when I became a poet.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

I'm a poet, and I spent my life in poetry.

You don't become a poet if you want to make any money.

On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.

Poets, we know, are terribly sensitive people, and in my observation one of the things they are most sensitive about is money.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

The experimental poetry thing is not my thing. It's a programme of the avant-garde: basically a refusal of the kind of poetry I write.