Anything Can Happen, on the other hand, is not only about the atrociousness of the September 11 attack, it is also a premonition of the deadly retaliation that was bound to come.

Best to say that once a poem is finished I trust it to make its way, and I trust readers will find their way to it and through it, if the thing has got itself rightly expressed.

Poetry cannot afford to lose its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness, its joy in being a process of language as well as a representation of things in the world.

I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

Harvard created wonderful conditions for me as a writerbut the writing was done, almost entirely, when I got home.

I don't miss teaching. I'm learning to take my time for myself.