The woman is perfected. Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment.

I don't see,' I said, 'how people stand being old. Your insides all dry up. When you're young you're so self-reliant. You don't even need much religion.

I have been holding a dialogue with myself and girding myself to stand fast without running.

We stayed at home to write, to consolidate our outstretched selves.

August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.

Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.

I don't know what started me, I just wrote poetry from the time was quite small. I guess I liked nursery rhymes and I guess I thought I could do the same thing. I wrote my first poem, my first published poem, when I was eight-and-a-half years old. It came out in The Boston Traveller and from then on, I suppose, I've been a bit of a professional.