“Maybe being winged means being wounded by infinity.”

“A door jumpsout from shadows,then jumps away. Thisis what I've come to find:the back door, unlatched.Tooled by insular wind, itslams and slamswithout meaningto and without meaning.”

“..in the last few years American poetry has come out of a poetry of complaint, not praising, and it was initially maybe rich. And it can continue to be rich if we remember that we shouldn't write out of complaint. We should write out of grief, but not grievance. Grief is rich, ecstatic. But grievance is not -- it's a complaint, it's whining.”

“I am that last, thatfinal thing, the bodyin a white sheet listening,”

“We suffer each other to have each other a while.”

“A poem is like a score for the human voice.”

“People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.”