How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.

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

Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.

as some strings, untouched, sound when no one is speaking. So it was when love slipped inside us.

Every other year or so I go to one of those great generous places, the artist retreats. Some of the poems in The Beauty were written at the MacDowell Colony, in New Hampshire, and others at Civitella Ranieri, in Umbria.

You must try, the voice said, to become colder. I understood at once. It's like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze, braced in stone. Only something heartless could bear the full weight.

In my poems though, as you say, the comic arrived fairly late. This doubtless has something to do with growing older. A person who's seen a bit of the world can't help but notice how foolish is the self-centeredness we bring to our tiny slice of existence.