Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

The older I get, the more I feel.

If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting.

We're all taking on too much, we're all asking too much of ourselves. We're all wishing we could do more, and therefore just doing more.

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.

Their spirits and their visions are embodied in their craft. And so is mine. It's not Jane Saw Puff. But the clarity of Jane Saw Puff is precious to me.