Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evilbut if some god shakes your houseruin arrivesruin does not leaveit comes tolling over the generationsit comes rolling the black night salt up from the ocean floorand all your thrashed coasts groan

They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.

You can get used to eating breakfast with a man in a fedora. You can get used to anything, my mother was in the habit of saying.

A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.

I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.

When I began to be published, people got the idea that I should 'teach writing,' which I have no idea how to do and don't really believe in.