It is fatal to one's artistic life to talk about something that is in process.

Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.

What I heard was my whole self saying and singing what it knew: I can.

But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.

When you're really caught up in writing a poem, it can be a form of prayer. I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer. I feel it in different degrees and not with every poem. But in certain ways writing is a form of prayer.

I 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.

There's in my mind a... turbulent moon-ridden girl or old woman, or both, dressed in opals and rags, feathers and torn taffeta, who knows strange songs but she is not kind.