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

The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.

Hope for a great sea-change timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance coming from the assent of your peers on the judging panel.

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.

The next move is always the test.

The whole relationship between a writer's spiritual/emotional condition and the kind of wordstuff and form-making that's going on in his work is an interesting one. When I was an undergraduate, there was a glib notion around that there was no reason to suppose a bad man could be a good writer.