In the particular presence of memorable language we can find a reminder of our ability to know and retain knowledge itself: the brightness wherein all things come to see.

An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond... a good feeling about his art.

To talk about the reality of life here and the work that you do here at the university.

The medium of poetry is not words, the medium of poetry is not lines-it is the motion of air inside the human body, coming out through the chest and the voice box and through the mouth to shape sounds that have meaning. It's bodily.

Poetry is the most bodily of the arts.

Autobiography is a genre notorious for falsehood.

My poems - like my family life, my life with friends, my teaching - these things express who I am. I don't feel any extra responsibilities or relishes or necessary evils in them. They are part of who I am, with all of those customary desires and doubts, purposes and confusions that come along with being a particular person.