each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature.

For poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring life back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only 'living and partly living.

The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need: in the artist it is mandatory. Unable to fulfill it, he goes mad. But when the artist is a woman she fulfills it at the expense of herself as a woman.

we are never done with thinking about our parents, I suppose, and come to know them better long after they are dead than we ever did when they were alive.

Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd.

Love cannot exorcise the gifts of hate. / Hate cannot exorcize what has no weight, / But laughter we can never over-rate.

Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.