I can find some way to make poetry out of my life's experiences.

My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass for new things to happen to us we want to hold on to certain moments we don't want our lives to end.

If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world then it has had its desired effect.

In the past poetry came in the form of spells and chants used to effect change.

Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena using with its own unique procedures and tools.

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting unstable and interactive.

Poetry seems to have been eliminated as a literary genre and installed instead as a kind of spiritual aerobic exercise - nobody need read it but anybody can do it.

When you translate poetry in particular you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words sentences phrases the triple tension between the line of verse the syntax and the sentence.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do I'll write a bad poem.

The music just tends to be a vehicle for that poetry.