"Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques"

"It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms"

"Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability"

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance"

"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas"

"We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry"

"Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going"

"How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?"

"The thing about being famous is, it's weird. The only people who get how weird it is are other famous people"

"I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that"

"I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation"