As for political poetry as it's usually defined it seems there's very little good political poetry.

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.

Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form and that it's timeless that it reaches back.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

A pet store is a celebration of dogs' existence and an explosion of options. About cats a pet store seems to say 'Here we couldn't think of anything else.' Cats are the Hanukkah of the animal world in this way. They are feted quietly and happily by a minority but there's only so much hoopla applicable to them.

Never be in a hurry do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever even if your whole world seems upset.

One is called to live nonviolently even if the change one works for seems impossible.

It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans who are not really Americans.

To me it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.