The poem I want to write is impossible. A stone that floats.

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.

Only poetry can measure the distance between ourselves and the Other.

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

I do believe that a poem needs to remind the reader of his or her own humanity, of what they are, of what they're capable of. Awaken them, in a sense, to the fact that there's a world in front of their eyes, that they have a body, they're going to die, the sky is beautiful, it's fun to be in a grassy field when the sun is shining—those kinds of things.

A poem is an invitation to a voyage. As in life, we travel to see fresh sights.

The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.