Let us never suppose that the structures of our human minds can contain God. - Alicia Ostriker

I love the way a poem moves me from what I already know, into the unknown-how exploratory it can be. How, when something confuses or disturbs me, I can come to understand it through the act of writing.

I grew up as a third-generation atheist-socialist Jew. My religious training consisted of being told that religion was the opiate of the masses.

"Poetry makes nothing happen," said W. H. Auden, but there are those of us who disagree. Poetry can tear at the heart with its claws, make the neural nets shiver, flood us with hope, despair, longing, ecstasy, love, anger, terror. It can help us think more lucidly. It can force us to laugh. Poetry can, as Conrad puts it, make us see. It can also, like Rilke's torso of Apollo, tell us that we must change our lives. From time to time, some of us believe, poetry changes the world.