 I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age. |
| What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world! |
| Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine. |
| The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings. |
| It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate. |
| I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day. |
| I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on. |
| I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it. |
| I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers. |
| For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art. |
