America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

The combination of drugs, homosexuality, some good prose recited on screen. . . . In the sweat lodge ceremony we went through, did you get any glimpse of the Ugly Spirit, what that was historically or biographically?

None of us understand what we're doing, but we do beautiful things anyway.

We are all exposed to the flash bulb of death.

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph

An unnoticed corner of the world suddenly becomes noticed, and when you notice something clearly and see it vividly, it becomes sacred. (On Robert Frank's photography)

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found - the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it.