"I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple -- or a green field -- a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing -- an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness --wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak --to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was needed."
"Attention is the beginning of devotion."
"I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple."
"I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple--or a green field--a place to enter, and in which to feel."
"Winter walks up and down the town swinging his censer, but no smoke or sweetness comes from it, only the sour, metallic frankness of salt and snow."