The dead made this world. We didn't make it. They made the poetry and the songs and the customs.

One day while studying a Yeats poem I decided to write poetry the rest of my life. I recognized that a single short poem has room for history, music, psychology, religious thought, mood, occult speculation, character, and events of one's own life. I still feel surprised that such various substances can find shelter and nourishment in a poem. A poem in fact may be a sort of nourishing liquid, such as one uses to keep an amoeba alive. If prepared right, a poem can keep an image or a thought or insights on history or the psyche alive for years, as well as our desires and airy impulses.

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

You have an utterly sincere glance when you look around after you are shipwrecked. You weep a long time on an island when you realize what's happened to you.

People tend to take stories literally these days.

Adulthood has something to do with not choosing any of the pure points of view, but living about half of what you really want to live.

Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.