In a murderous time/the heart breaks and breaks/and lives by breaking.

The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance begins when you try to convert it into language.

I associate the garden with the whole experience of being alive, and so, there is nothing in the range of human experience that is separate from what the garden can signify in its eagerness and its insistence, and in its driving energy to live -- to grow, to bear fruit.

In a murderous time/the heart breaks and breaks/and lives by breaking.

I like an ending that's both a door and a window.

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.

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