The process of writing a poem represents work done on the self of the poet, in order to make form.

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

My lifetime listens to yours.

If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.

The world is made up of Stories, not Atoms.

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

Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling.