"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."

"To have great poets, there must be great audiences."

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

"A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring."

"The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem.""

"You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick... You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in."

"A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman."

"Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful."

"He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life."

"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history."