In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.

When you play chess alone it's always your move.

Poems are other people's snapshots in which we see our own lives.

Making art in America is about saving one's soul.

Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat and the poet is only the bemused spectator.

Insomnia is an all-night travel agency with posters advertising faraway places.

The stars know everything, So we try to read their minds. As distant as they are, We choose to whisper in their presence.