I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.

Even a painful longing is some form of presence.

The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air. Its laboring work, its effort, its black passageways like despair. That’s the way a poet looks for words. With muscles, gestures.

I don’t write poetry when I wish, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

I’m moved by everything broken and crippled. Since that’s how we really are.

My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.

I have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, that’s all.