The College Bulletin published a transcript of this discussion in its May 1972 issue. This can be viewed as a PDF, or read online by following the links:

• Pt. 1: remarks on teaching and Dr. Spooner, influences, free verse [link]
• Pt. 2: what a poet can do, political poetry, favorite (and “unfavorite”) poems, corrections and collaborations [link]
• Pt. 3: teaching poetry, languages and translation, the joy of great art [link]
• Pt. 4: audience; novels; war poetry; Frost, Eliot, and Dickinson; advice to fledgling poets; wit and poetry [link]
• Pt. 5: Goethe, the ’30s generation, art and anarchy [link]
• Pt.6: detective fiction, movies, manuscripts, Freud, drugs. [link]

‘I hear it’s terrible now, that honors seminars meet in the evening and go forever.’

‘When I was a student, contemporary literature was something we looked at for ourselves and I think we were reasonably informed. We wouldn't have dreamt of going to a teacher and saying, “We want to have a course.”’

‘The thing one gets tired of - they may be quite good - is the old warhorses, things you find in anthologies and refuse to read.’

‘I am very puzzled when they ask for student participation because later in life, when one sins, one has to sit on committees. If they knew what it is like to sit on committees, how very boring it is. ... Thank God when I was a student nobody ever asked me to be on a committee!’

‘I object very much to manuscript books because what you want people to read are the final results and when they see all those mistakes you made, they think, “Oh, I could have done that as well.”’