A poetic list is a talent in itself. You can write a list of things, and it can be boring..

I've spent much of my life being attuned to watching for an image or a phrase that can trigger what might be a poem - could become a poem..

The greatest tragedy that can befall a poet is to be praised by being misunderstood..

I think my prose - mine and that of others - sometimes slips into a cadence or rhythm that can replicate or come close to the music in a wonderful po….

If I'm excited by something bodily, and curious about it, I generally want to delve into it and explore it with poetry. That's the way I ordinarily w….

I think parts of my soul have been saved by my writing, not in the sense of escaping death, but escaping the death of the moment, perhaps..

I think the language of science is highly lyrical and evocative and an important part of our lives in many ways..

My object when writing prose is to write as clearly as possible. I think I know what I'm saying in prose, and I want others to understand it and to b….

I'm primarily a poet, so I'd have to say in my case I'd investigate the mystery in poetry in a different way than prose might investigate it, in a wa….

I see my poems as interlinked. No poem gives an answer. It may offer other questions, it may instigate other questions that then become poems..

What triggers a poem for me is not the same as what triggers an essay. My mind is geared now to looking for, or to watching out for, the image that a….

One of the most important differences I see between prose and poetry is the music of the language..

I approach writing a poem in a much different state than when I am writing prose. It's almost as if I were working in a different language when I'm w….

We're all vulnerable in our various ways, and what we are physically, our bodies, is what has developed with the goal of keeping that life safe and i….

As far as I can tell, writing the essays didn't change the way I wrote poetry. Although the essays contain scattered passages that might be called ly….

I don't write or think too much about the word "salvation." I might; I probably should. We are such needy creatures, needing to be saved, to feel we ….

To my mind, most prose poems are more prose than poetry. They don't possess most of the qualities of a poem..

It sounds old-fashioned to say, but we have some kind of purpose for being here, not poets or writers, but all of us humans..

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subjec….

In poetry I can let the language go, allow an image that seems out of place to enter and see what happens, always listening to the music that's being….

Often when I write poetry I don't quite know what I'm saying myself. I mean, I can't restate the poem. The meaning of the poem is the poem..