Poetry is an art and chief of the fine art the easiest to dabble in the hardest in which to reach true excellence.

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

Poetry criticism at its worst today is mean in spirit and spiteful in intent as if determined to inflict the wound that will spur the artist to new heights if it does not cripple him or her.

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms so thinking about distance thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.

Poetry must be made by all and not by one.

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art in poetry in music of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful moving or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.