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.

Nothing could stop Mississippi.

There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man's shirt on its morning run.

Each body has its art.

beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.

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

I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.