“Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.”

“Poetry is an orphan of silence.”

“Charles Simic, when asked what he thought of Slam Poetry events: "They are fun, but they have as much to do with poetry as Elvis Presley had to do with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk".”

“Only poetry can measure the distance between ourselves and the Other.”

“If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.”

“The truth is dark under your eyelids.What are you going to do about it?The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.A meek little lamb you grew your woolTill they came after you with huge shears.Flies hovered over open mouth,Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,The bare branches reached after them in vain. Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldierOf a defeated army, you'll stay at your post,Head bared to the first snow flake.Till a neighbor comes to yell at you,You're crazier than the weather, Charlie.”

“The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine… While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you’re making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might’ve thrown them out with last spring’s cleaning. It’s snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing.”