“This poem is the poem I'm writing becausewe aren't speaking, and it is making my heart hurtso bad that sometimes I can't make it up off the floor.”

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sakes. Now, I mean, I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend--a lousy poem.”

“Contra la policía/Against the PoliceMy entire Oeuvre is against the policeIf I write a Love poem it’s against the policeAnd if I sing the nakedness of bodies I sing against the policeAnd if I make this Earth a metaphor I make a metaphor against the policeIf I speak wildly in my poems I speak against the policeAnd if I manage to create a poem it’s against the policeI haven’t written a single word, a verse, a stanza that isn’t against the policeAll my prose is against the policeMy entire OeuvreIncluding this poemMy whole OeuvreIs against the police.”

“We'd all like to see our poems walking alone in the world. Like children reared to be independent adults. Some parents raise a child conservatively (that is, with no exposure to the darker things awaiting them beyond the door), but you can see how that's a mistake right? There's no way to know how best to prepare a child for the future. No way to know how to write a publishable poem -- I'm not saying safe poems don't get published. Or that sheltered children can't succeed. Just that you write the best poems you can and send them out. Sometimes they return home weeping. Sometimes they make their own way.”

“My mother is a poem I'll never be able to write, though everything I write is a poem to my mother.”

“It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain.”