The art of utterance persuades initially by its music and its rhythm, before semiotic or personal characteristics come into play.

You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem, you are the voice in the poem.

Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.

The non-artists among us are always terribly busy, but finally disappear without a trace.

One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.

Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity.

All good poets of the past, almost without exception, were at least bilingual if not trilingual.

I do not give the honorific name of 'poetry' to the primitive and the unaccomplished.

A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.

When I first heard Wallace Stevens voice, it was by chance: a friend wanted to listen to the recording he had made for the Harvard Vocarium Series.

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.

She had learned over time that to know anything was bearable. It was secrecy that could not be borne.

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.

The discovery of a grey hair when you are brushing out your whiskers of a morning - first fallen flake of the coming snows of age - is a disagreeable thing.

The power is in you. The answer is in you. And you are the answer to all your searches: you are the goal. You are the answer. It's never outside.

To have to liberate everybody doesn't sound very free to me. You're gong to go liberate people who maybe don't want to be liberated.

Whenever you notice your thoughts detour into attack mode, say out loud or to yourself: Happiness is a choice I make.

Those who would give up their civil liberties for security deserve neither.

Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality.

A 100 years from now the consequences for standing for Jesus will be greater than the consequences of not standing for Jesus today.

MFA programs are to the world of art what gentrification is to your neighborhood.