It is bizarre that some people can't understand how a serious poet could work at a finance firm. Goethe was a bureaucrat. Eliot worked as a banker.

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

I do think most poets are in denial about what the real taboos in writing are--the real boundaries.

Poetry is God's work.

I remember when I was writing my memoir and I was worried about what other people would think when they read it, and my mother, who can be this incredibly wise person, said that it really didn't matter because strangers who read it would never meet me anyway, and people I knew were aware of my secrets.

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?

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