From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.

When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been.

We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

A poem is a place where the conditions of beyondness and withinness are made palpable, where to imagine is to feel what it is to be. It allows us to have the life we are denied because we are too busy living. Even more paradoxically, poetry permits us to live in ourselves as if we were just out of reach of ourselves.

There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.

I haven’t met God and I haven’t been to heaven, so I’m skeptical.

The burial of feelings has begun.