We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.

In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash.

Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness

In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.

The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.

A decade of cutting away dead flesh, cauterizing old scars ripped open over and over and still it is not enough.

Reality, the oppressor's tongue.