Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules..

The writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition..

I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender..

Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate..

I speak to you in one tongue/ but every moment that ever mattered to me/ occurred in another language..

Much of our lives involves the word “no.” In school we are mostly told, “Don't do it this way. Do it that way.” But art is the big yes. In art, you g….

The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking.

Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter..

Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about mo….

Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out..

Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem..

A nation's art is the expression of its soul..