I'm not here to make exorbitant claims for poetry, lest they seem personal, but one thing must be said about poetry – it's the ultimate. The nearest thing to it is penultimate, even religion. Poetry is the thoughts of the heart…. It's a thought-felt thing. Poetry is the thing that laughs and cries about everything as it's going on – and makes you take it.

A poet is a person who thinks there is something special about a poet and about his loving one unattainable woman. You'll usually find he takes the physical out on whores. I am defining a romantic poet – and there is no other kind. An unromantic poet is a self-contradiction like the democratic aristocrat that reads the Atlantic Monthly. Ink, mink, pepper, stink, I, am, out! I am not a poet. What am I then? Not a farmer – never was – never said I was.