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,….

Other families bought automobiles; we had a horse-headed hitching post in front of our house and drove horses..

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….

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 have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Columbia, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana State….

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….

There must be an alternative between Hollywood and New York, between those two places psychically as well as geographically. The University of Iowa t….

I wanted to write poetry almost a little more than I wanted to eat..

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 had been warned about Jews by my gentile friends - they did terrible things with knives to boys..

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….

Soldiers of the American Revolution fought that 18th century war with heavy muskets. In the early 20th century, we kids fought it every Fourth of Jul….

The sharpest memory of our old-fashioned Christmas eve is my mother's hand making sure I was settled in bed..

Corncobs are the greatest fire-making tinder..

You come to know the aches and vanities and tastes and intrigues of an entire neighborhood at a drug store..

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….

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..

All families had their special Christmas food. Ours was called Dutch Bread, made from a dough halfway between bread and cake, stuffed with citron and….

Human life is too difficult for people..

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….

To eat in the same room where food is cooked - that is the way to thank the Lord for His abundance..