I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence -from "Splittings

As a very young poet, I had been brought up on that dogma that politics was bad for poetry.

The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is 'only words' and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.

... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

What kind of beast would turn its life into words?

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political.

I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.