I wrote poetry for seven or eight years, maybe longer, before I could say I was a poet. If people asked, I'd say I wrote poetry; I wouldn't go further. I was in my mid- to late-thirties before I felt that I was a poet, which I think meant that I had begun to embody my poems in some way. I wasn't just a writer of them. Hard to say what, as a poet, my place in the world is. Some place probably between recognition and neglect.

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

Originality, of course, is what occurs when something new arises out of what's already been done.

I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me.

I will try to disappoint you better than anyone ever has.

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

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