The poem is the device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new way - engaging, compelling, even beautiful.

Sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can't read the address.

If I don't take the risk, I'll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge.

a happy birthday this evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride the day down into night, to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable page with the pale gray ghost of my hand

This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness.

Every poet gets to choose what kind of community he or she serves with the poems, and it's true that there is a community for very difficult, challenging poetry. It's a community that's established itself over the last 80 years, that was originally, in effect, really started by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. They believed that poetry ought to contain learning, that it ought to rise upon all the learning that went before.

There are mornings when everything brims with promise, even my empty cup.