Occupation: Poet Birth: October 12, 1908 Death: March 22, 1991
Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid..
Touch was important. The evening of the Third of July we would go around the neighborhood and look at the fireworks others had bought, taking them ou….
The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of the horse barn, still writing those doubtful poe….
Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses..
Our small ears never had such a workout as on the Fourth of July, hearing not only our own bursting crackers but also those of our friends, and often….
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate,….
A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first….
The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed..
Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten..
You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug store..
The corncob was the central object of my life. My father was a horse handler, first trotting and pacing horses, then coach horses, then work horses, ….
I knew about holiness, never having missed a Sunday-school class since I started at four years. But if Jews were also religious, how could our neighb….
I can still remember the feel in my hand of that most wonderful American coin ever minted, a nickel with a buffalo on one side and the head of an Ind….
I had been warned about Jews by my gentile friends - they did terrible things with knives to boys..
Human life is too difficult for people..
Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; Out of his grief, delight and rage..
I have published in 'The New Yorker,' 'Holiday,' 'Life,' 'Mademoiselle,' 'American Heritage,' 'Horizon,' 'The Ladies Home Journal,' 'The Kenyon Revie….
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power..
But maybe it's up the hills or under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never found. But what you find, whatever you find, is only part o….
To eat in the same room where food is cooked - that is the way to thank the Lord for His abundance..
Contrary to slanderous Eastern opinion, much of Iowa is not flat, but rolling hills country with a lot of timber, a handsome and imaginative landscap….