Once a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader, - Maria Popova

We can no more claim all credit for our achievement than deflect all blame for our impediments.

Unlike the prose of letters, pinned to the physical and emotional reality of the present, in poetry the imagination is allowed to travel between fact and fantasy, to traverse present, past, and future, so that the reader, and perhaps even the writer, is never quite sure — nor need ever ask — to what extent the images evoked correspond to the intersection of matter and moment we call reality.

I don't subscribe to the tortured genius myth. I don't think it's necessary to suffer in order to create. But I do think that out of what we have suffered and do suffer comes that restlessness to find meaning to find beauty to find wonder to give voice and shape to what we feel.