The next move is always the test.

I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.

If you go into an underground train in London - probably anywhere, but chiefly in London - there's that sense of almost entering a ghostly dimension. People are very still and quiet; they don't exchange many pleasantries.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.