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.

Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.

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

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

Anything Can Happen is also, incidentally, a poem that arose from teaching. I'd talked about the Horace Ode (I, 34) [on which the poem is based] in a lecture I gave at Harvard in the fall of 2000 entitled Bright Boltsand remembered it after the Twin Towers attack.

The next move is always the test.

Once I was on the job, once I had got started, I felt safe enough, but the anticipation made me tense.