“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.”

“I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?”

“Unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere.”

“Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”

“An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor.”

“The poet wants to ‘say’ something. Why, then, doesn’t he say it directly and fortrightly? Why is he willing to say it only through his metaphors? Through his metaphors, he risks saying it partially and obscurely, and risks saying nothing at all. But the risk must be taken, for direct statement leads to abstraction and threatens to take us out of poetry altogether.”

“Revelation WE make ourselves a place apartBehind light words that tease and flout,But oh, the agitated heartTill someone find us really out.’Tis pity if the case require(Or so we say) that in the endWe speak the literal to inspireThe understanding of a friend.But so with all, from babes that playAt hide-and-seek to God afar,So all who hide too well awayMust speak and tell us where they are”