The world is always somewhat vicious. I take that as a given, but at various times in various circumstances that fact will be no more than a shadow or an echo behind some poem. Other times it will be more manifest. I try to write myself into articulations of half-felt, half-known feelings, without program. I'm always working toward getting my world and, hopefully, the world outside of me into a version that makes sense of it. Viciousness requires the same precision as love does.

When I stop becoming, that's when I worry.

Poetry does so many different things, it's difficult to say anything definitive about its role, which of course varies from culture to culture. It can range from being stories of the tribe to the private lyric, to being as W.H. Auden said "the clear expression of mixed feelings" to nonsense verse.

Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body.

I love what's left after love has been tested.

There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.

I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches. A heart is to be spent.