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.

I find it strange that - at least in my take on it - the people who are the most alarmed about the dire times we live in are the ones who seem to be humorless, in their taste for poetry anyway. Humor is just an ingredient. It's always been in poetry. It kind of dropped out of poetry I think during the 19th and up to the mid-twentieth century. But it's found its way back. And it's simply an ingredient.

Poetry is like standing on the edge of a lake on a moonlit night and the light of the moon is always pointing straight at you.

It is as if one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the Southern Hemisphere of the brain.

I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.

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

It's a good thing to get poetry off the shelves and more into public life.