How can I take the dent in the lid of a canning jar well-sealed, or the plain look of surprise on the face of a cow, when you meet it on the highway and it will not turn aside, or the way snow, when it first falls in the mountains, is so fragile you are afraid to touch it, at all – and turn these things through my writing into something clear enough, and passionate enough, that teen-age boys in America will not have to go do a war somewhere in order to feel alive.
Carol Bly, as remembered by writer Kim Stafford, of Portland, Ore., from a talk Bly gave in Casper, Wyo., in the 1980s. It was a sentence he memorized in one pass and later confirmed by letter with her. Dear Carol, may I use this sentence of yours? he wrote. Tell everyone, she replied.