The knowledge that it takes to write a poem gets burnt up in the writing of the poem.

People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.

Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not.

There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Maybe being winged means being wounded by infinity.

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

Some things never leave a person: scent of the hair of one you love, the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.

In writing poetry, all of one's attention is focused on some inner voice.

There is no fact or fiction, reality or illusion, there is only the trick of perception.

The greatest threat to religion in any society is not persecution, but rather apathy born of irrelevance.

You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job.

Chastity without charity is a lamp without oil.

If you want to be safe, walk in the middle of the street.

I'm always making Butcher Holler sound like the most backward part of the United States-and I think maybe it is.

I said earlier that dead things don't always stay dead. Well, I'm one of them. don't worry - I'm not like the Strigoi. But I did die once (I don't recommend it).

Poetry...the deepest abyss of infinity.

But there are things you can't consult anybody about.

Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality.