Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly. Where is the knowledge we have lost in information. It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words. If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. In my beginning is my end. Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm.