To submit to chance is to reveal the self and its obsessions.

The religion of the short poem, in every age and in every literature, has a single commandment: Less is always more. The short poem rejects preamble and summary. It's about all and everything, the metaphysics of a few words surrounded by much silence. …The short poem is a match flaring up in a dark universe.

The highest levels of consciousness are wordless.

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

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

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.

I left parts of myself everywhere, The way absent-minded people leave Gloves and umbrellas Whose colors are sad from dispensing so much bad luck