Hayden Carruth

"The wilderness begins at the edge of my body, at the edge of my consciousness, and extends to the edge of the universe, and it is filled with menace."

"I had always been aware that the Universe is sad; everything in it, animate or inanimate, the wild creatures, the stones, the stars, was enveloped in the great sadness, pervaded by it. [...] Never then or now have I been able to look at a cloudless sky at night and see beauty there."

"This is not a man who sits down to "write a poem"; rather, some burden of understanding and feeling, some need to know, forces his poems into being. Thoreau said, "Be it life or death, what we crave is reality." So it is with Carruth. And even in hell, knowledge itself bestows a halo around the consciousness with, at moments, attains it."