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."

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.

I'm always somehow drawn to that sense of how fragile things are and how a garden means so differently depending upon whose language you happen to be in or whose century you happen to be in.

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.

For me, failure has to be acknowledged, needs to be faced in some way.

If it's a drop of dew, it will dissolve.

I'm in California, so I know people who are natives who tell me there's lots of weather here, but it's not the same as being in Vermont. Since I grew up on the East Coast I miss that weather all the time. You'd think I'd get used to not having it, but I don't.