"A woman like that is not ashamed to die./ I have been her kind." From "Her Kind" in To Bedlam and Part Way Back, p 16.

"I will hold my awkward bowl,/ with all its cracked stars shining/ like a complicated lie,/ and fasten a new skin around it/ as if I were dressing an orange/ or a strange sun." From "For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further" in To Bedlam and Part Way Back, p 34.

"You come, a brave ghost, to fix/ in my mind without praise/ or paradise/ to make me your inheritor." From "The Division of Parts" in To Bedlam and Part Way Back, p 46.

"My friend, my friend, I was born/ doing reference work in sin, and born/ confessing it. This is what poems are . . ." From "With Mercy For the Greedy" in All My Pretty Ones, p 63.

"There is too much food and...