“Poems 1959-2009_I turn into the man they photograph.I think I'll ask him for his autograph.He's older than I am and more distinguished.The beauty of the boy has been extinguished.He smiles a lot and then not.Hauteur is the new hot.He tilts his nose up and looks imperious.He wants to make sure he looks serious.He smiles at the photographer but notThe camera. He thinks cold is the look that's hot.You know the poems. It's an experience.The way that Shylock is a Shakespearience.A Jew found frozen on the mountain at the howling summit,Immortally preserved singing to the dying planet from it.”

“July 4th fireworks exhale over the Hudson sadly.It is beautiful that they have to disappear.It's like the time you said I love you madly.That was an hour ago. It's been a fervent year.”

“Too much is almost enough”

“There must always be a fringe of the experimental in literature--poems bizarre in form and curious in content, stories that overreach for what has not hitherto been put in story form, criticism that mingles a search for new truth with bravado. We should neither scoff at this trial margin nor take it too seriously. Without it, literature becomes inert and complacent. But the everyday person's reading is not, ought not to be, in the margin. He asks for a less experimental diet, and his choice is sound. If authors and publishers would give him more heed they would do wisely. They are afraid of the swarming populace who clamor for vulgar sensation (and will pay only what it is worth), and they are afraid of petulant literati who insist upon sophisticated sensation (and desire complimentary copies). The stout middle class, as in politics and industry, has far less influence than its good sense and its good taste and its ready purse deserve.”

“Every person has one particular time in his life when he is more beautiful than he is ever going to be again. For some it is at seven, for others at seventeen or seventy, and as Laura Fleischman read out loud from Shakespeare, I remember thinking that for her it was probably just then.”

“I want Sam to stop liking Craig.Now I guess maybe you think that’s because I am jealous of him. I’m not. Honest. It’s just that Craig doesn’t really listen to her when she talks. I don’t mean that he’s a bad guy because he’s not. It’s just that he always looks distracted.It’s like he would take a photograph of Sam, and the photograph would be beautiful. And he would think the reason the photograph was beautiful was because of how he took it. If I took it, I would know that the only reason it’s beautiful is because of Sam.I just think it’s bad when a boy looks at a girl and thinks that the way he sees the girl is better than the girl actually is. And I think it’s bad when the most honest way a boy can look at a girl is through a camera. It’s very hard for me to see Sam feel better about herself just because an older boy sees her that way.”

“Papa taps on the skylight and I look up. He waves at me and smiles. I smile back. For now, I don't need to know what lies ahead. For now it's enough just to be here, safe aboard the Morning Star with my family and friends. For now, it's enough to be home.”