I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event.

Rush Limbaugh we expect nonsense from him. But the Vatican that's another story. When the Vatican is so threatened that it launches attacks on nuns well you know what they say in politics a hit dog hollers.

The one thing we can all be sure about in politics is you are as well to expect the unexpected.

If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?

If we ask a vague question such as 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer such as 'Poetry is the music of words ' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival in it of poetry itself - as a vocation and an elevation almost.

A public expectation it has to be said not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

Traditional matter must be glorified since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things the listeners we must remember needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

A poem can have an impact but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.