I turn to poems to find spaces that might enlarge, rather than distill, experience.

I have always been attracted to apostrophe, perhaps because of its resemblance to prayer. A voice reaches out to something beyond itself that cannot answer it. I find that moving in part because it enacts what is true of all address and communication on some level - it cannot fully be heard, understood, or answered.

I think that a good deal of poetry and art gives us some sense of access to another's voice, perception, texture of thought, imagination. Sometimes it gives us better access to the strangeness in ourselves.

I'd rather be in a tent than in a house.

New and Selected Poems: Volume Two

No contemporary poet has brought so much lived experience into such formally perfect poems as Richard Wilbur.