I don't think any poetry is written that isn't primarily written to the self, in a way... I'm always talking to myself. But I seem to want somebody else to listen to it. I need, I do want an audience. So it's a strange thing. It's a very private conversation that then, you make public, kind of, like, the starfish flipping its stomach out.

I simply want to celebrate the fact that right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly - and with very little financial encouragement - saving lives and minds. I can’t think of a more efficient, hopeful or egalitarian machine, with the possible exception of the bicycle.

The day misspent, the love misplaced, has inside it the seed of redemption. Nothing is exempt from resurrection.

The satisfactions/of agreement are/immediate as sugar--/a melting of the/granular, a syrup/that lingers, shared/not singular./Many prefer it.

A lot of the job that one has to do as a writer is to protect the thing that doesn't match the world.

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

Failure: the renewable resource.