From the reader’s view, a poem is more demanding than prose.
And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.
The reality of a poem is a very ghostly one. It suggests, it suggests, it suggests again.
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.
Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.
For some of us, the less said about the way we do things the better.
And what does it matter when light enters the room where a child sleeps and the waking mother, opening her eyes, wishes more than anything to be unwakened by what she cannot name?
It came to my house. It sat on my shoulders. Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours. I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.
These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.
Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.
In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.
Poetry is about slowing down. You sit and you read something, you read it again, and it reveals a little bit more, and things come to light you never could have predicted.
Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.
Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.
To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
I have been eating poetry.
Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.
Poetry is, first and last, language – the rest is filler.
The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can be surmised from the stacks of submissions.
I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet’s personality.