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.

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

Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.

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.

...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.