“As it turns out, craft is to poetry what invention is to imagination--not antithetical, but needless. The eye does not invent the light; there's no need. The mind makes no materials; it doesn't have to. Imagination is the present state of things, and poems rejoice--in particular, in detail--that this is so. Again, the only work is trust, a trust rewarded by ease and by betterment.”

“The poetry of attention is not metaphysical. It trusts the opened eye to see. By faith, the eye stays open. And so the work of poetry is trust that, by faith, is shown to be no work at all.”

“In the poetry of attention, poems are not problems.”

“each of the best minds ends by making fairy tales”

“she shapes her surface lights into the shape of breasts.”

“And so it was that I became an anthology piece translated along with many others out of the French into your small arms though I am a phantom”

“The afterlife unravels before our eyes”