If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things.
Poetry is meant to be heard.
I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them.
I'm going to die one day. I know it's coming for me, too. I'll be a mountain, I'll be a stone on the beach. I'll be nourishment.
I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us.
I like books that are fat and full.
The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day.
I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second.
You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul.
Words have not only a definition... But also the felt quality of their own kind of sound.
Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.
I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.
I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it.
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Writers must... Take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.
I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... Almost involuntary in my life.
I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.
My parents didn't care very much what I did, and that was probably a blessing.
I simply do not distinguish between work and play.
Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket you put your life into it and make something out of that.
Wasn't it Emerson who said, 'My life is for itself and not for a spectacle'? I have a happy, full, good life because I hold it private.
My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.
