You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.

I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write.

I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.

The darkness has it's own light.

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.