Poetry is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat.

A good poem has its own life. It's like bringing a child into the world. You, the poet, birthed the child, but the child will surprise you continually. I think a work of art has its own aliveness, its own future.

The courageous conversation is the one you don't want to have.

Poetry for me has been a long pilgrimage, a journey and a growing relationship with the unknown.

To feel a full and untrammeled joy is to have become fully generous; to allow our selves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear, the dropping away of the anxious worried self...the vulnerability of happiness felt suddenly as a strength, a solace and a source, the claiming of our place in the living conversation.

Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.