Quotes from J. D. McClatchy

Novelists want to flood, poets want to distill.

Decades now of looking back at it—in some old satellite's rearview mirror, say—has something to show beyond the folds and feeders,the volumes of magma risen into native rockor the buried flow of old fires coolingin ocean beds. The damage has been memorized.

It's like adoring the open sea, the clash of elemental forces, the overpowering scale of water and sky, the sleek majesty of sloops, the billow of sail and pull of line—and wanting to study and pay homage to it all by building a model of a favorite boat—and then deciding to do it inside a bottle.