“Where but in the very asshole of comedown is redemption: as where but brought low, where but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we discern the savage afflictions that turn us around: where but in the arrangements love crawls us through”

“Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.”

“You came one day andas usual in such matterssignificance filled everything-your eyes, the things youknew, the way you turned,leaned, stood, or sat,this way or that.”

“Plant the seed whose vine or tree may hang you.”

“not so much looking for the shapeas being availableto any shape that may besummoning itselfthrough mefrom the self not mine but ours.”

“What destruction have I been blessed by?”

“One can't have itboth ways and bothways is the onlyway I want it.”