“I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words.”

His simplest and most enduring explanation of why he became a poet · Poetic Manifesto, 1951

• Art
• Love
• Poetry

“I’m sick of my always hurdygurdying these little griefs out and me like a monkey on the top of it all with my beggar’s cap.”

A painfully comic expression of weariness with his own troubles and dependence on patrons · Letter to Princess Marguerite Caetani, 1951

• Despair
• Truth

“The first thing I look for in a poem is a musical quality, a rhythm.”

Highlighting sound and rhythm as primary poetic qualities · Interview or essay, as commonly attributed

• Music
• Poetry