In the country of pain we are each alone.

I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.

I write poems about relationships, love relationships, and I'm not able to do that all the time. I could go two years without writing poems, and then write a dozen. Having a novel to work on, with the intricate puzzle of character and plot to work out, is satisfying for the time there is no poetry.

I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.

The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes. Under all the superficial praise of the creative is the desire to kill. It is the old war between the mystic and the nonmystic, a war to the death.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

Poetry is a dangerous profession between conflict and resolution, between feeling and thought, between becoming and being, between the ultra-personal and the universal - and these balances are shifting all the time.