poetry is the sung voice of accurate perception.

The future is here, now, and the past is full of actual deeds, real history. Utopias hardly have the meat on their bones to sustain a people in grave times.

People come and go in life, but they never leave your dreams. Once they're in your subconscious, they are immortal.

The world is full of mystery but it must not be choked with secrets: we must talk to one another.

True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world

Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.

The artist's work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. And something terrible resides at the heart of wonder. Celebration is social, amenable. Wonder has a chaotic splendor.