When I had no roof I made audacity my roof.

Deciding to remember, and what to remember, is how we decide who we are.

The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about whats in style, whats current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire, what you like to listen to in music. What do you like to look at in architecture? Try to make a poem that has some of those qualities.

Poetry’s medium is the individual chest and throat and mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.

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.

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.