I Got About Half The Time I

Those Of Us Who Make Up Poems Have Agreed Not To Say What The Pain Is.

When Anyone Seriously Pursues An Art - Painting, Poetry, Sculpture, Composing - Over Twenty Or Thirty Years, The Sustained Discipline Carries The Artist Down To The Countryside Of Grief, And That Descent, Resisted So Long Proves Invigorating. . . . As I've Gotten Older, I Find I Am Able To Be Nourished More By Sorrow And To Distinguish It From Depression.

The Older I Get, The More Beauty I See In The Word Renunciation.

It Is Surely A Great Calamity For A Human Being To Have No Obsessions.

Myth And Poetry Represent A Reservoir Of Vertical Thinking, Which We Could Also Call Longing And Gratitude To Ancestors. We Need That Gratitude Desperately.