One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.

Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.

Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.

Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons off the tree! I don't want to forget who I am, what has burned in me, and hang limp and clean, an empty dress -

I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer.