My tribute to mystical, magical trees that the Cherokee called "standing people. . . ."

One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees, crusted with snow, And have been cold a long time, to behold the junipers, shagged with ice, the spruces, rough in the distant glitter of the January sun, and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land, full of the same wind, blowing in the same bare place for the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing herself, beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.

One must read poetry with one's nerves.

After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.

Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.

Compare the silent rose of the sun And rain, the blood-rose living in its smell, With this paper, this dust. That states the point.