I think clarity is the real risk in poetry because you are exposed. You're out in the open field. You're actually saying things that are comprehensible, and it's easy to criticize something you can understand.

No one here likes a wet dog.

Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

And I should mention the light which falls through the big windows this time of day italicizing everything it touches.

You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

I thought originally when I was in school and I wanted to be a poet, I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.

There are just long gaps where I can't find a point of insertion, I can't find a good opening line, I can't find a mood that I want to write into. But once I do, once a line falls out of the air, or I get a little inkling of a subject and I recognize that, it's like the sense that a game has started.