Who knows what will happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
Belief isn’t always easy. But this much I have learned – if not enough else – to live with my eyes open.
Of course! The path to heaven doesn’t lie down in flat miles. It’s in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it.
There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether.
Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.
All my life I have been restless – I have felt there is something more wonderful than gloss – than wholeness – than staying at home.
Everybody has to have their little tooth of power. Everybody wants to be able to bite.
The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.
Also I wanted to be able to love And we all know how that one goes, don’t we? Slowly.
Love, love, love, says Percy. And hurry as fast as you can along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust. Then, go to sleep. Give up your body heat, your beating heart. Then, trust.
Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn’t just an idea.
A fact: one picks it up and reads it, and puts it down, and there is an end to it. But an idea! That one may pick up, and reflect upon, and oppose, and expand, and so pass a delightful afternoon altogether.
All culture developed as some wild, raw creature strived to live better and longer.
In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.
A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.
But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?
The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.
Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems.