I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice exploitation humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.

I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn't mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it but they're happy if they do get it.

The low points I had all helped make up my character so I probably wouldn't want to do away with them because I like being flawed and I like having them help me grow and change and become better and stronger.

I wouldn't change anything. I've made mistakes but thanks to those mistakes I've learned.

I don't like definitions but if there is a definition of freedom it would be when you have control over your reality to transform it to change it rather than having it imposed upon you. You can't really ask for more than.

So here's the question: Without a change in leadership why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

I went through life like an idiot for a great deal of the time saying there's nothing I would change. That was a very arrogant thing to say. There's a lot I would change. There are people I would have steered clear of.

Well I do think when there are more women that the tone of the conversation changes and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn't mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that you've forgotten high school.

Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for or any work at all. So here's the question: Without a change in leadership why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

Those issues are biblical issues: to care for the sick to feed the hungry to stand up for the oppressed. I contend that if the evangelical community became more biblical everything would change.