In the dream life, you don't deliberately set out to dream about a house night after night; the dream itself insists you look at whatever is trying to come into visibility.

Last night was the worst night of my life, ... This man up here, well, he was trying to choke this little boy. They whipped him down. Then they threw him over the railing.

One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.

One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.

Hope is the hardest love we carry.

The Cloudy Vase

Past time, I threw the flowers out,
washed out the cloudy vase.
How easily the old clearness
leapt, like a practiced tiger, back inside it.