Any artist, in any field, wants to press deeper, to discover further. Image and sound play are among the strongest colors available to poetry's palette. For a long time, I've wanted to invite in more strangeness, more freedom of imagination. Yet music, seeing, and meaning are also cohering disciplines. They can be stretched, and that is part of poetry's helium pleasure. But not to the point of breaking.

The heft of a life in the hands grows both lighter and weightier. Over time, my life has become more saturated with its shape and made-ness, while my poems have become more and more free. The first word of every poem might be "Yes." The next words: "And then."

Poems . . . are perfume bottles momentarily unstopped - what they release is volatile and will vanish, and yet it can be released again.

An ordinary hole beside a path through the woods might begin to open to altered worlds.

I'd say that the middle stanza is closer: that's the place where the poem ranges unexpectedly into a different realm.

Time ... brings us everything we have and are, then comes with a back-loader and starts taking it all away.

One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.