Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.

I believe that all poetry is formal in that it exists within limits, limits that are either inherited by tradition or limits that language itself imposes.

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

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.

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.