I like the idea of there being times when even words cost so much you used them sparingly. I have known a lot of old men and women who talked as if they were paying Western Union by the word.

In my work, I really try to look at ordinary things quite closely to see if there isn't a little bit of something special about them. I'm trying to make something as nearly perfect as I can out of words.

All night, this soft rain from The distant past. No wonder I sometimes Waken as a child.

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

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

If you can find two poems in a book, it could be a pretty good book for you. You know, two poems you really like. There are some poets who are fairly big names in contemporary poetry and who write a book and I might like three or four poems in the book, but the rest of them don't appeal to me personally; but I think that's the way it really ought to be. I think it's really a rare thing to like everything that somebody has written.

Mike Forsberg's images give us bright openings onto a world. . . . Here on the Great Plains both people and trees and everything else are in some way shaped by wind and weather. This book, too, has been shaped by where it comes from, and that's just a part of its beauty.