If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.

I loved the illusion, the conviction, the desire - whatever you want to call it - that the words were agents rather than extensions of reality. That they made my life happen, rather than just recorded it happening.

The United States' poetry emerged when there was a high literacy rate in the United States, even in the 19th century. People read the poetry when it was written. In Ireland, there was a poor literacy rate and people remember that poetry. That was handed on as a memorial tradition.

If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.

. . . We love fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing

Sleep in a world, your final sleep has woken

I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.