I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life.

So I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

Poetry is a sky dark with a wild-duck migration.

I'll die propped up in bed trying to do a poem about America.

Where was I going? I puzzled and wondered about it til I actually enjoyed the puzzlement and wondering.

Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams.