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.

Poetry is innocent not wise. It does not learn from experience because each poetic experience is unique.

Short fiction is the medium I love the most because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that though lacking a novel's length satisfies the reader.

We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other.

I have epiphanies all the time because I'm always thinking. I'm a thinker. I'm always writing poetry I'm always coming to conclusions.

I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry I can do that.

Because people are very interested in my poetry in what I say.

My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there I know there will be people who will listen.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary the only home.

I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.