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I think so. Robert Duncan speaks of the “tone leading” of vowels. One vowel sound leads you to another vowel sound leads you to another vowel sound—I mean, at some point, the core of the business of poetry is to be taken someplace you didn’t know you were going by the sound out in front of you that…

I’d never seen her cry like that. Made me cry like that. Jesus. All the pain coming out. Remembering how we’d quit our jobs. How doom had crept over us. Every morning we woke up to find our existences worse. I’d sold the bed, the couch, the chairs, the kitchen table. I’d sold everything. Then we sl…

A few years ago I had a headache after which I was a different person. It changed the way I thought about myself. Forever after, I’d know I had a limit. I don’t remember the pain, exactly, but I remember my certainty. I trust it.

Only an idiot wouldn’t be depressed, I think, and it makes me smile.

Depression keeps me from writing and tells me to blame everything else.

After I give a reading, a worried teenager asks, Do you think you’re a good writer?

People ask, What are you depressed about? But there is no about.

Crossing an ocean is a good metaphor for reading a book, but it’s not a good metaphor for writing one unless the crossing takes place before the age of astronomy, and the captain is ready to fall off the edge of the world.