I'll never get out of politics. I have friends in public office. I have things that I want to do. You can't go back in life. I won't go back to the existence I had before of running a political consulting firm and signing up clients and advising campaigns in exactly that way.

I think things changed as a result of a certain perception of our politics. When we went through our zealous self-righteous period it didn't exactly win us any friends.

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling and waiting for traces of blood to appear in the water.

In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats we will stop telling the truth about them.

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and yes read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

That's a wonderful change that's taken place and so most poetry today is published if not directly by the person certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself working with his friends.

I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language though so I am always aware of every word's meaning or multiple meanings.

I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader... I guess when I was in my 20s and in New York and maybe even in my early 30s I would write for my wife Janice... mainly for my poet friends and my wife who was very smart about poetry.

I was excited by what my painter friends were doing and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too and that was a wonderful little fizzy sort of world.