To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.

If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children things that touch your soul.

Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm well-being and love for humanity - the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga.

Probably induced by the asthma I started reading and writing early on my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.

Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important.

I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian.

For whatever reason people including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading do not read poetry.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems I would suggest you do two things: first while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

That is what I did with Jack and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music.