While also importantly not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone but everyone should have the choice.

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.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords.

It's something we guys have all done. Made tapes for girls trying to impress them to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it because you're too awkward to do it.

I have written some songs but I would really call what I've done poetry at the end of the day because I'll sit with my guitar for hours and hours on end for like a week and then I won't touch it for a month. I also just have no confidence. And you know what? I don't have time because I'd rather be doing other things like knitting.

Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.

As an actor there is room for a certain amount of creativity but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina skill or ability to write a novel but I'd love to write short stories and poetry because those are my two passions.

The Bible should be taught but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction myth poetry anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them and I am a poet of memory.