Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.

Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind- loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies in the perfumed heat of summer night.

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art.

The reality of a poem is a very ghostly one. It suggests, it suggests, it suggests again.

Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.

We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.