I do love writing prose interspersed with the poetry of other people. Their rhythms break into my prose and create a connection.

I have thought for many years that the audience any creative writer imagines has a great effect on what gets written.

One of the most important differences I see between prose and poetry is the music of the language.

I see my poems as interlinked. No poem gives an answer. It may offer other questions, it may instigate other questions that then become poems.

The poem is a process, a way for me to discover questions, to ask them clearly or to discover the results of certain suppositions. Suppositions are a form of questioning.

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.

Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem.

My object when writing prose is to write as clearly as possible. I think I know what I'm saying in prose, and I want others to understand it and to be able to restate it.

The greatest tragedy that can befall a poet is to be praised by being misunderstood.

I think parts of my soul have been saved by my writing, not in the sense of escaping death, but escaping the death of the moment, perhaps.

I've spent much of my life being attuned to watching for an image or a phrase that can trigger what might be a poem - could become a poem.

I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.

Compassion is happiness.

A writer must pay attention his or her surroundings.

You know you're getting old when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.

I never question a success, any more than I do the right of a bulldog to lie in his own gateway.

If you're asking me to compare myself to other people, I don't really know what other people are like.

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

Friends--or lovers--are not always available to each other. Inner turmoils can cause us to be unhearing when someone needs us, to need to receive understanding when we should be giving understanding.

No expense has been incurred but what has been approved of and provided for by Parliament.

So different, this man And this woman: A stream flowing In a field.