The world is beautiful but not sayable. That's why we need art.

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

We name one thing and then another. That’s how time enters poetry. Space, on the other hand, comes into being through the attention we pay to each word. The more intense our attention, the more space, and there’s a lot of space inside words.

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

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.

The highest levels of consciousness are wordless.

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