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.

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

It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

The sum of the parts equals less than the whole. Or the howl. Or the how. Or the hole.

To think of the myriad ways that we live is to think of the ways that we die: Delinquent in our brains, in debt-- If we settle, then, our due account and walk through the forest, Will we finally be free?

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

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