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To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.

Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.

Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.

If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.

Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other; it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.

We all know what it means to be sung to. And poetry is very close to that.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.