"For me so much of poetry and the making of poetry have to do with a willingness to wait for something to yield itself. It’s a powerlessness that one allows to occur. In my own life I feel as if I do a lot of waiting, and it seems to me a proper posture of the heart, or the mind, waiting for the poem to arrive. Or waiting for a final shapeliness to occur in my own life. Or waiting for a god to show himself. Waiting for the dead to come back."

—Li-Young Lee, from the interview “Waiting for a Final Shapeliness to Occur” in Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee.