Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

Poetry is not only dream and vision it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.