I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.

The beginner hugs his infant poem to him and does not want it to grow up. But you may have to break your poem to remake it.

Poetry finds its perilous equilibrium somewhere between music and speech.

For me a true poem is on the way when I begin to be haunted, when it seems as if I were being asked an inescapable question by an angel with whom I must wrestle to get at the answer.

Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.

Words are more powerful than perhaps anyone suspects, and once deeply engraved in a child's mind, they are not easily eradicated.

The only way through pain…is to absorb, probe, understand exactly what it is and what it means. To close the door on pain is to miss the chance for growth.