I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not yet a number for.

A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.

You know being born is important to you. You know nothing else was ever so important to you.

Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.