Words floating in air, lines cut on a page, stanzas carved into units. Poetry is a mode of associative thinking that takes a different route to knowledge than philosophy, its ancient antagonist. It follows its own wayward but resolute path.

I don't think that we should underestimate the capacity of tenderness that poetry opens within us.

Writing fixes the evanescence of sound and holds it against death.

If you had told me, though, when I was twenty-four that I would write about Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up, I would have said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Why would I have Skokie in a poem?’ But you become resigned. Your job is to write about the life you actually have.

And every year there is a brief, startling moment When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air: It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies; It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

As long as there's been poetry, there have been lamentations.

I started writing poetry as a teenager in suburban Chicago out of emotional desperation.

I'm so happy to be an advocate for poetry.

Poetry takes place in time. It is a durational. Things take place in sequence.