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

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

In time of crisis, we summon up our strength. Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.

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