I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.

The burial of feelings has begun.

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.

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

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.

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

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