"I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry."

"I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that."

"From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not."

"But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events."

"Money won't make you happy... but everybody wants to find out for themselves."

"There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."

"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get."

"Happiness must be cultivated. It is like character. It is not a thing to be safely let alone for a moment, or it will run to weeds."