It would be great if politics were fact-based but it is not and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution not the country.

One of the things that I think you see sometimes in politics is a certain degree of caution. It's usually advised by consultants who don't want to see you march to the end of a limb.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe and which mean very little.

I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation.

In politics as in poetry it is sometimes true that it is darkest before dawn.

Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape sometimes out of one's cultural myths and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

I know I'm not a wordsmith. And I don't write poetry. Sometimes I think I should because it's really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

Even when poetry has a meaning as it usually has it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.