Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face.

I don't mind suffering as long as it's really about something. I don't mind great luck, if it's about something. If it's the hollow stuff, then there's no gift, one way or the other.

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.

And I never believed that the multitude / of dreams and many words were vain.