I didn't have time to sit down and look at the work of a year and choose what to type.

When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver.

Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going to blow up.

Every poet I know - although there may be some I don't know who lead very different lives, who maybe live in the country and don't teach - tends to be just like the rest of us: just really busy, really overcommitted.

She'd crack A joke sharp as a tin lid Hot from the teeth of the can-opener, And cackle her crack-corn laugh.

The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother.

I have learned to get pleasure from speaking of pain