Writing can sometimes be exploitative. I like to take a few steps of remove in order to respect the privacy of the subject. If readers make the link, they have engaged with the poem.

To me many short poems read and write like beginnings that simply whet my appetite; I want to get over that.

My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass, for new things to happen to us, we want to hold on to certain moments, we don't want our lives to end.

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

Reading should be a repeat performance.

The point of an experiment is not to arrive at a predetermined end point, to prove or disprove anything, but to deliver a poem that reveals much about the process taken.

Writing can sometimes be exploitative. I like to take a few steps of remove in order to respect the privacy of the subject. If readers make the link, they have engaged with the poem.

I have been told by a member of the board of one of Canada's most prominent literary magazines that a submission of mine once caused a great deal of controversy.

No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?

I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have.

I would not say I chose to write long poems on a conscious level. The long poem has been a relative constant.

The community of poets I belong to is not as close as it used to be, if only for the fact that our lives have become busier: jobs, children, and the like.

I have always been very obsessed with time. Time's passage makes us all very vulnerable and because we all experience it in our own way, it can make us feel very alone.

I consider a poem to be a kind of experiment where a number of elements are brought together under test conditions to see how they will interact to create meaning or relevance.

The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight.

Most victims of my autobiographical verse are either far too polite, remarkably understanding unaware that I have written poems about them.

Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.

Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools.

The poet must decide not to impose his feelings in order to write without sentimentality.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense.

The reader's challenge is to replicate the experiment by reading the poem and to draw their own conclusions.

Who is the ideal reader? God only knows.

If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world, then it has had its desired effect.

A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate.

In the past, poetry came in the form of spells and chants used to effect change.

Poets can't resist the dramatic pull of their lives and so inevitably write autobiographical verse.

We are comfortable with the fact that we cannot know personally what happened in the world before we were born, yet we are uncomfortable with the notion that we will stop engaging with time at some point in the future.

You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.

I became intrigued with colour theory. The absurd pronouncements of the Colour Institute, a group that decides what colours are hot each year or season, amused me.

I feel very connected to poets across the country.

I find it exhausting to administer a magazine without an office or paid staff.

I sometimes like to tinker with poems that have failed, ones that I have sent aside. Even years afterward, I will revisit them if there is something about them that I cannot give up on.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

We need to begin an all-out diplomatic offensive on Darfur in order to prepare the way for a peacekeeping force that can ensure protection for the people of Darfur.

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order.

I don't like to hurt people, I really don't like it at all. But in order to get a red light at the intersection, you sometimes have to have an accident.

I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It's passing through you more than you're creating it. You're not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

It's a very hard and competitive business in which you have to fight every day in order to impose yourself.

I am co-counsel and as co-counsel I have the right to represent myself, speak for myself and conduct myself and my trial by myself in my best interests in order of due process.

I wanted to make the violence beautiful in order to heighten our revulsion.

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

Testimony is an integral part of the Black religious tradition. It is the occasion where the believer stands before the community of faith in order to give account of the hope that is in him or her.

I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.