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" I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. "

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" At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all. "

" The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones. "

" Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound. "

" I'd rather write about polar bears than people. "

" Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. "

" To tell you the truth, I believe everything - tigers, trees, stones - are sentient in one way or another. You'd never catch me idly kicking a stone, for example. "

" If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer. "

" I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. "

" One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. "

" Wasn't it Emerson who said, 'My life is for itself and not for a spectacle'? I have a happy, full, good life because I hold it private. "

" Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along. "

" You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about. "

" Instead of taking the reader by the hand and running him down the hill, I want to lead him into a house of many rooms, and leave him alone in each of them. "

" To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. "

" I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it. "

" I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read. "

" To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. "

" You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul. "

" I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings. "

" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "

" We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. "

" I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all. "

" The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they're full of bicycle trails. "

" I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write. "

" Apparently, I've been considered a recluse. "

" I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "

" I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation. "

" There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay. "

" As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other. "

" I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things. "

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