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.

We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

And what does it matter when light enters the room where a child sleeps and the waking mother, opening her eyes, wishes more than anything to be unwakened by what she cannot name?

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

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.