Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to me.

Language is as fragile as the little alpine plant.

Everyone had always told me I had to see alpine flowers, since I was writing about flowers, and I had never seen these. So I happened to be teaching a class at the University of Colorado, and I got to go for hikes that took me there. But my perspective was most often down at ground level, trying to see quite tiny exquisite flowers.

Looking out a window from different vantage points changes what you see and therefore what you write.

I've always been interested in the fragility of things, and with special urgency now because of climate change, but also because of the accidents of reading.

Each of us is present, but partially.

Shakespeare, of course, makes us ever aware of transience, not only in the sonnets, but also powerfully in his plays - spectacles for a brief period of time and then gone, as when Prospero describes the pageant fading, leaving "not a rack behind."