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

I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it!

One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.

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

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

Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.