When I was in college I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations the same hopes and fears to which the Bible addresses itself it might rival it in distribution.

In poetry you must love the words the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet and he would set out in conscious determination on an epic poem.

Rap is poetry set to music. But to me it's like a jackhammer.

I've written poetry since I was in the first grade and it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I realized poetry could be put to music and become a song.

I never thought I'd be doing poetry books. I never really studied poetry. But the first one I did was after my mother died and I realized that people sort of think and talk about her style and fashion but in fact what made her the person she was was really her love of reading and ideas.

The biggest problem is people are afraid of poetry think they can't understand it or that it will be boring.

Poetry is really a way of sharing feelings and ideas.