I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry. ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to words, and that words can do wonderful things, and it's too bad to just let them lie there without doing anything with and for them.

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.

... sometimes you have to deal / Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore.

I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

There are no magics or elves / Or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must / Wizard a track through our own screaming weed.

Be yourself. Don't imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.