A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

Read poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture — the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us — has momentarily stopped. These poems have come from a great distance to find you.

And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.

First of all I think that poetry is very noble and I always have with me the sense of the nobility of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I have tried to remember throughout that poetry is made by flesh-and-blood human beings. It is a bloody art. It lives on a human scale and thrives when it is passed from hand to hand.

I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.