Poetry is, first and last, language – the rest is filler.
No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.
Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.
We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.
The burial of feelings has begun.
I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.
It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the poem is merely its shape.
And Robert Lowell, of course – in his poems, we’re not located in his actual life. We’re located more in the externals, in the journalistic facts of his life.
And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.
There’s a certain point, when you’re writing autobiographical stuff, where you don’t want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.
Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.
A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.
A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.
If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we’d live in a much more humane and decent world.
It’s very hard to write humor.
I certainly can’t speak for all cultures or all societies, but it’s clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It’s not part of the cultural mainstream.
I am not concerned with truth, nor with conventional notions of what is beautiful.
I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.
I would go out under the stars and enter the smallness of being that was mine, and I would disappear into the emptiness within, and it seemed enormous.