In a pine tree,/ A few yards from my window sill,/ A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and/ down./ On a branch./ I laugh, as I see him abandon himself/ To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do/ That the branch will not break.

It goes without saying that a fine short poem can have the resonance and depth of an entire novel.

I write abundantly. And then my next step is to struggle to reduce the ornament, to reduce the abundance-to prune the book, in other words, the way one prunes a tree-so it can grow. This is my idea of a book.

In a pine tree,/ A few yards from my window sill,/ A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and/ down./ On a branch./ I laugh, as I see him abandon himself/ To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do/ That the branch will not break.

Poetry can keep life itself alive. You can endure almost anything as long as you can sing about it.

Most of the pollution in the water already is dead animal and plant matter and building debris, ... good stagnant nursery for mosquitoes.

I asked the Mesquite coach who he thought the best team in Mesquite is. He said they were about even.