Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

My only crime was being a man and living in the world of men, and you don't have to do special penance for that. The crime and the penance, in that case, coincide perfectly. They are identical.

I never thought of a combat with the past. I guess I think more of trying to find what there is valuable to us, the line of continuity to us, and through us.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

Heat lightning prowls, pranks the mountain horizon like

Memory. I follow the soundless flicker,

As ridge after ridge, as outline of peak after peak,

Is momentarily defined in the

Pale wash, the rose-flush, of distance.