It is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning. For every one of us, living in this world means waiting for our end. Let whoever can win glory before death. When a warrior is gone, that will be his best and only bulwark.

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

Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself.

The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful... to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself.

Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.

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

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible.