Poetry's work is not simply the recording of inner or outer perception; it makes by words and music new possibilities of perceiving

A studio, like a poem, is an intimacy and a freedom you can look out from, into each part of your life and a little beyond.

A certain amount of housekeeping also goes on in my poems. I wash doorknobs, do dishes, mop floors, patch carpets, cook.

At some unnoticed moment, I began to understand that a life is written in indelible ink.

Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.

The trick, though, is to not lose compassion, to not allow the sense of absurdity to outweigh the awareness of real beings, with real feelings. Mean-spirited humor turns the world into cardboard, the way Midas's simple-minded greed turned food into inedible and useless stuff.

If truth is the lure, humans are fishes.