One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.

Of course! The path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it.

If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.

The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery.

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.