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I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem.

Only in your imagination can you revise.

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.

Revision is the heart of writing. Every page I do is done over seven or eight times.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

Oh, I do a tremendous amount of rewriting. I just obsessively rewrite. Although sometimes there are sections, sometimes you're just lucky and a paragraph will just kind of come out. And that's great. But that's not ordinary in a day's work.