Your presence was shore where I rested/ released from the hoodoo of that dance, where I spoke/ with my true voice again.

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.

I believe it's true that one person can make a difference. But how much more difference 100 people make, or rather 99.

We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.

This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth.

[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality . . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns.

As well have a talon as a finger, a muzzle as a mouth, as well have a hollow as a heart.

Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shinning

Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fire blazes. No one ever thanked him.

It seemed to me as we were talking about Christ rising from the dead, the sun popped over the mountain. That was indicative of Christ rising - a new day. It just makes sense.

Earth is wonderful stadium to play, till you are on pitch.

Everyone would like the world always to be in bubble times. But that doesn't happen.

I believe a calm dog is a happy, obedient dog that won't get into trouble.

This place is like crazy on crackers.

If you'd just try, I'm sure you'd be able to fly.

My Christian faith is at the very heart of who I am.

In the United States, the political system is a very marginal affair. There are two parties, so-called, but they're really factions of the same party, the Business Party.

My best dreams and worst nightmares have the same people in them.

So, I can hurt now, or hurt later.

You told a lie, an odious damned lie; Upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie.