It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time.

The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have.

The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.

LIGHT FROM WITHIN my friend, cancer got you damn it: you had it beat for seven years at least. how did it come back? Why all that pain. again. and you, such a fighter you fought me over and over with tears and words and promises. you fought for me with honesty and a light so bright it hurts my heart. sweet lorna. at peace now finally no more battles, just light from within a flickering candle in the dark burns with you.

The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book.

Poetry has to be something more than a conception of the mind. It has to be a revelation of nature. Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark.