All that I've done in my life thus FAR, all the POEMS and all the pictures, are not so much an intermingling of my life with art but a DIVINE accident.

I was TAUGHT that POEMS don't end, they just kind of stop. There's never an ending to a POEM; it's a continuation for later. When I write, I write for me, and I write in POETIC FORM.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's POETRY. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and IMMEDIATELY began composing in my head. I WROTE down the melodies even before I GOT to a piano.

I have ALSO WRITTEN some POEMS which have not been collected in a VOLUME.

I have EARNED WAGES as a waitress, a nanny, a librarian, a personnel OFFICER, an agricultural laborer, an advertising secretary, a typesetter, a proofreader, a mental-health-care provider, a substitute teacher, and a book reviewer. In and around the edges of all those jobs I have written POEMS, stories, and books, books, books.

I was an ENGLISH MAJOR, and I ALWAYS WROTE POEMS.

No poems can PLEASE for LONG or live that are WRITTEN by water drinkers.

I've thought of the last line of some poems for YEARS and tried them out, It wouldn't WORK because the last line was much too BEAUTIFUL for the POEM.

On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the CLASSICAL language, and to begin my EXPERIMENTS in writing poetry in the so-called VULGAR TONGUE of the people.

Samuel Marshak was one of the founders of MODERN Russian children's literature. Soviet children used to KNOW his poems by heart, but only since glasnost have American editors shown any INTEREST in issuing his poems here.

Poems are ideally suited, in some ways, to SOCIAL MEDIA because they PACK so MUCH meaning into so little language.

I LIKE to read a lot of books and POEMS. Even though poems are SHORT, I enjoy the EMOTIONS that COME with them.

Ever SINCE I was a kid, I wanted to go to Oberlin and wanted the liberal arts. OBVIOUSLY I REALLY get INTENSE pleasure out of drawing connections between pieces and POEMS and literature and ideas.

I was ALWAYS writing - WHETHER it's ideas, poems, whatever - because we spent so much time in the CAR traveling from city to city.