I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best.

It is important to act as if bearing witness matters.

We are, each of us, our own prisoner. We are locked up in our own story.

When Sleeping Beauty wakes up, she is almost fifty years old

I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them.

Sometimes tradition is a way of keeping going.

To build is to dwell.