There is a difference between our wisdom and nature's simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds.

I'm always trying to ask myself both "Who am I as an individual?" and "What are the cultural forces that have made me the person that I am?" How can I understand myself as a cultural creature as well as an individual? I'm really obsessed with that question, and always asking my students to consider it.

We're nature. Our minds are nature. Our desire to make poetry is nature.

Teachers have had a great effect on me as a child. I've always loved school and had a great appetite for learning. I cried when it was time to go back home and tried to jump from my mother's moving car to run back there.

I like the dance between sustained focus and digression that the long poem invites. A controlling metaphor helps to sustain the long poem.

Life seems complicated to me; I feel confused a lot of the time by life. I feel confused about the fact that we can be so tender as creatures to one another, and so monstrous at the same time.

The countries that are the least responsible for causing climate change are paying the heaviest price.