Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be for the world an example of a genuinely free democratic just and humane society.

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so.

If the United States of America or Britain is having elections they don't ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections they want observers.

The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose but that it has turned to advertising copy.

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.

She was the Judy Garland of American poetry.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate or just never come back I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much and so I just went.

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies but it's clear that in America poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.