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

We must breathe time as fishes breathe water.

I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.

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

Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen.

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.

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.