I speak to you. You speak to me. Is that fragile?

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

Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires.

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

The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.

I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.

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