Money is sullen And wisdom is sly, But youth is the pollen That blows through the sky And does not ask why.

A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

I've been reading a lot lately about Indian captives. One woman who had been captured by the Indians and made a squaw was resentful when she was rescued because she'd found that there was a lot more work to do as the wife of a white man.

I do think that the kind of writing that I do will always be around and printed in books, magazines, and now blogs.

There's nothing compared to the history of writing about the city of New York that you get, say, in Charles Reznikoff.

Oh, Georgia booze is mighty fine booze, The best yuh ever poured yuh, But it eats the soles right offen yore shoes, For Hell's broke loose in Georgia.

One cannot balance tragedy in the scales Unless one weighs it with the tragic heart.