A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. Where did the expression "a place in the sun" first come from? My rational thought process cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate.

Indecision is a virus that can run through an army and destroy its will to win or even to survive.

Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. May summer last a hundred years.

After owning a pool, I think the best way to enjoy the water is to have a friend who has a pool.

When I was twelve, I started reading Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, and - do we dare breathe the name - William Faulkner.

I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.