I felt a longing to compose a radical or root poem that would speak to what has its back turned to me.

I have daughters and I have sons./When one of them lays a hand/On my shoulder, shining fish/Turn suddenly in the deep sea.

Some people can't go into church any longer to feel this longing, but they still have the longing, so what do they do? Well, one thing you can do is what people do in prison; they turn to poetry.

As a parent you have to do some renunciation.

The distance between the adolescent and the true adult is about five thousand miles, but the distance between the adult and the elder is almost as large.

Male initiation does not move toward machoism; on the contrary, it moves toward achieving a cultivated heart before we die.

As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.