The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

Don't be surprised if I demur, for, be advised my passport's green.

Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.

I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.

So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.