I don’t think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

The good Lord made the world so we could earn our joy, Ma said. But it’s no guarantee we’ll ever be happy.

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can’t define it.

I don’t think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

When things are going badly, when you feel trapped between sword and sea, when you’re under assault, acknowledge the devil – but keep your eyes on Christ. He will see you through. He will make a way.

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It’s one of the great things poetry does.

I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it’s what gets you through. So it’s partly just curiosity to see what you can do.

We don’t want to live in the dark moods of imponderable mystery, but neither do we want to miss them altogether. they allow us to emerge from the tender sadness of the manger to sing with the angels in the skies above...

The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They’re very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged.

Pound’s translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.