Oppressed cultures often envy those which are not, or oppressed individuals do, and sometimes those which - and who - are not envy those which - who - are.

I was ruined before I got started. I say ruined, but I could say blessed; I was too far gone to believe in it. And I'm shocked how generation after generation repeats the behavior.

Tolstoy is one of the greatest artists in history, but he finally became infused with the idea of the uselessness of art. He gave himself to his own kind of religion.

All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstones poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most - shall we call her her master - Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul.... In Barnstone, too, the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet.

It's just that very few poets disturb the peace to any degree.

It's a kind of liberation to break free in language, if you can break free, but it's also a confinement, because form confines you - whatever the form.

You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached - not at all detached, although as I think of the word "detachment," I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.