Poetry is one of the most fugitive arts: it can be assigned to memory, taken and hidden in the mind, smuggled into smoky cabin back rooms, recited th….

. . . We love fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing.

The United States' poetry emerged when there was a high literacy rate in the United States, even in the 19th century. People read the poetry when it ….

I'm really fortunate to be at Stanford. I go home every 10 weeks, but Stanford apart from being just a wonderful university is one of the places that….

I loved the illusion, the conviction, the desire - whatever you want to call it - that the words were agents rather than extensions of reality. That ….

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods..

It has always seemed to me a great honor to be called an Irish poet. I don't think I will ever lose that, but it's also a great honor to be a woman p….

I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would….

I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry..

To be an Irish poet after that 19th century in which there was such a struggle toward the light, I think still will always be in the hearts of the wr….

Flesh is heretic. My body is a witch. I am burning it..

Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person’s life..

If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift..

Sleep in a world, your final sleep has woken.

Love will heal What language fails to know.