In politics it seems retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

By nominating Chuck Hagel to be his Defense secretary President Obama is putting forward an aloof contrarian who doesn't suffer fools - a striving politician who considers himself above politics.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics in religion in philosophy as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

After much prayerful consideration I feel that I must say I have climbed my last political mountain.

I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean the clues were in the poems but they didn't read them very carefully and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene.

Frankly writing poetry for children is plain old fun and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me.

From reading a previous answer you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

For my part if I consider poetry as an object I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.

No Arab ruler will consider the peace process seriously so long as he is able to toy with the idea of achieving more by the way of violence.