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.
Denise LevertovI believe every space and comma is a living part of the poem and has its function, just as every muscle and pore of the body has its function. And the way the lines are broken is a functioning part essential to the life of the poem.
Denise LevertovI thought I was growing wingsโ it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fireโ it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirrorโno longer young, the newsโalways of death, the dogsโrising from sleep and clamoring and howling, howling.... ("Seeing For a Moment")
Denise Levertov