Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling. A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually - that is, when you reach it, you will reach it intellectually too - but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.

A world is to be fought for, sung, and built: Love must imagine the world.

Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest.

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare

However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.