When your first marriage goes into tragedy, you become very battle-scarred... I even thought of suicide. Luckily, I had known some happy marriages.

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first air that the Christ Child breathed.

The corncob was the central object of my life. My father was a horse handler, first trotting and pacing horses, then coach horses, then work horses, finally saddle horses. I grew up around, on, and under horses, fed them, shoveled their manure, emptied the mangers of corncobs.

I wanted to write poetry almost a little more than I wanted to eat.

Writing is rewriting what you have rewritten.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the un-visionary language of farm, city, and love.