“I've triedto become someone else for a while,only to discover that he, too, was me.”

“ConnubialBecause with alarming accuracy shed been identifying patterns I was unaware ofthis tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt I ...”

“Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you've been alive.”

“ConnubialBecause with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt—...”

“the next time you hear someone in a workshop remarking on how good a particular free-verse line or passage sounds, scan it. The odds are that it will fall into a regular metrical pattern.”

“Flashlight beams danced crazily”

“Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.”

“Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to ...”

“They say that it is always poets that die in wars, and I never got over a sense of being in the trenches.”