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I think more influential than Emily Dickinson or Coleridge or Wordsworth on my imagination were Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies, and Loony Tunes cart...more

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There's something very authentic about humor, when you think about it. Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can't pretend to be funny.

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People think of poetry as a school subject... Poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. Tha...more

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I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does.

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Is there a better method of departure by night than this quiet bon voyage with an open book, the sole companion who has come to see you off, to wave y...more

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I see all of us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail of cr...more

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I can hear the library humming in the night, a choir of authors murmuring inside their books along the unlit, alphabetical shelves, Giovanni Pontano...more