poetry has been able to function quite directly as human interpretation of the raw, loose universe. It is a mixture, if you will, of journalism and metaphysics, or of science and religion.

The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows,is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'tbut that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.

At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

I work mornings only. I go out to lunch. Afternoons I play with the baby, walk with my husband, or shovel mail.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

Silence is not our heritage but our destiny; we live where we want to live.