“Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.”

“part memory part distance remainingmine in the ways that I learn to miss you”

“I offer you what I have myPoverty”

“from what we cannot hold the stars are made”

“Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.”

“So this is what I amPondering his eyes that could notConceive that I was a creature to run fromI who have always believed too much in words”

“Im not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. Ive seen a chunk of the universe, true, but theres still so much more to see. I doubt Ill ever cure t...”

“My hope, my heaven, my trust must be,My gentle guide, in following thee.”

“Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmonious...”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”