Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the product's something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.

That's the main business of the poem!-to see if you can't make up a language that sets all your selves talking at once-all of them being fair to each other.

The eye is pleased when nature stoops to art.

What is our praise or pride but to imagine excellence and try to make it? What does it say over the door of heaven; but, homo (sapiens) fecit?

Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole/ And casting out myself, become a soul.

I would feel dead if I didn't have the ability periodically to put my world in order with a poem. I think to be inarticulate is a great suffering, and is especially so to anyone who has a certain knack for poetry.

Odd that a thing is most itself when likened