People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

...Sometimes I dream that everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly, and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness- and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing; and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.

I know many lives worth living.

I was hurrying through my own soul . . . I was leaning out . . . I was listening.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.