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.

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

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

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.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

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