I don't think I would have written a combat novel if I had just had peacetime military training. I think, in fact, I probably would have remained a poet and just written a short story every now and then.
I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet.
When I was about 14, in about 1984, I decided to become a great poet. Faber & Faber was going to publish me, and when Ted Hughes read my first anthology he would invite me to Yorkshire for meat pies and mentorship.
I hadn't published a book of poetry in over a decade because I've been very ill. As I got better and started to write, I said, 'Wow, even as an old woman, I could have a selected book of poems.'
I was very lucky to have a mother who encouraged me to become a poet.
A mighty good sausage stuffer was spoiled when the man became a poet.
People think they're gonna make a living off poetry. Ten years ago, maybe a couple of people did. Right now, no one, I don't think.
Then one can't make a living out of poetry? Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes.
A young poet in America should not be advised at the outset to give up all for the Muse-to seclude himself in the country, to live hand from mouth in Greenwich Village or to escape to the Riviera. I should not advise him even to become a magazine editor or work in a publisher's office. The poet would do better to study a profession, to become a banker or a public official or even to go in for the movies.
