Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

Some poems present themselves as cliffs that need to be climbed. Others are so defensive that when you approach their enclosure you half expect to be met by a snarling dog at the gate. Still others want to smother you with their sticky charms.

I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.

How shall the heart be reconciled / To its feast of losses?

The first task of the poet is to create the person who will write the poems.

A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed.

A longing for the dance stirs in the buried life.