The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

I've got a book of poetry by the bed one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans.

We recognise in the finished art which is the result of these conditions the best words in the best order - poetry and to put this essential poetry into different classes is impossible.

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles theses and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction but often it's really just about the money the perceived prestige.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

You know in my music career there was a moment where the irony was just so heavy. There were people in my audience that were the reason I developed neuroses. These people that tortured my life were using my art my poetry as fuel for them to torture other people.

When you're going through something whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody you often feel like 'Oh my God I'm so overwhelmed I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact poetry's a nice reminder that no everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But of course only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.