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.

I know that in some ways I operate from a kind of antiquated interest in imagery, while many contemporary poets are not so interested in imagery. I think part of it is my training, and just my visual sense of things.

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.

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

I want literature to open all the doors that I can't open by myself, and to allow me to see things that I wouldn't otherwise see.

Even your own memory changes over time because of circumstances or even because your body changes.