The poem comes in the form of a blessing — "like rapture breaking on the mind" — as I tried to phrase it in my youth. Through the years I have found this gift of poetry to be life-sustaining, life-enhancing, and absolutely unpredictable. Does one live, therefore, for the sake of poetry? No, the reverse is true: poetry is for the sake of the life.

Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected (1995)