"It is what poetry does to the world, what poets do with words, and what words will do to a poet. And that's the rack of it. And you have never experienced the rack while working on a poem then you have never worked on a poem. Have you never put language in an extenuating circumstance with dangerous limits until an acute physical sensation results? Stanley Kunitz has said it gets harder and harder to write, not easier, because your standards and expectations-the limits of your endurance-become higher."
— Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey