No poet ever wrote a poem to dishonor life, to compromise high ideals, to scorn religious views, to demean hope or gratitude, to argue against tenderness, to place rancor before love, or to praise littleness of soul. Not one. Not ever.
Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion.
And probably, if they don’t waste time looking for an easier world, they can do it.
A poem should always have birds in it.
Listen, the heart-shackles are not, as you think, death, illness, pain, unrequited hope, not loneliness, but lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety, selfishness.
What lay on the road was no mere handful of snake. It was the copperhead at last, golden under the street lamp. I hope to see everything in this world before I die.
God, or the gods, are invisible, quite understandable. But holiness is visible, entirely.
I did not think of language as the means to self-description. I thought of it as the door – a thousand opening doors! – past myself. I thought of it as the means to notice, to contemplate, to praise, and, thus, to come into power.
Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?
And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.
Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves. In what is probably the most serious inquiry of my life, I have begun to look past reason, past the provable, in other directions. Now I think there is only one subject worth my attention and that is the precognition of the spiritual side of the world and, within this recognition, the condition of my own spiritual state.
I believe everything has a soul.
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
How sometimes everything closes up, a painted fan, landscapes and moments flowing together until the sense of distance – say, between Clapp’s Pond and me – vanishes, edges slide together like the feathers of a wing, everything touches everything.
But, to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps they are the only teachers. I would go so far as to say that, if one must make a choice between reading or taking part in a workshop, one should read.
My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive.
And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.
I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes... open your life, open your hands.
The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too. There is only one world.