What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

The ghosts of Rilke and Wordsworth--along with the 300+ MFA programs, which now seem to employ all Living Poets--have misled the American public egregiously into thinking that poets are morally pure and/or useless.

I do not play the instrument In longing but in quest Not to be undertaken Not to be lost In a forest of bliss.

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

Today, from the bridge, the East River is sparkling. The money is swirling around the tall buildings like tides or like tithes, And I wonder, does anyone swim in this river, I wonder, does anyone pray?

Poetry is God's work.

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.