We still have our larynx, we still have our minds and we still have our consciousness. We still have this gift to make things with words and images and get outside these preordained tropes and ways of thinking and the master narratives - what's handed to us.

The whole red state/blue state thing is very interesting. Watching that shift over the years.

One has to be cautious and respectful of the power of the "substance" guides. I don't advocate imbibing the "little saint children," as Maria Sabina calls the magic mushrooms, or anything else for everyone. I find that certain substances reconnect me to a primal context of purpose that goes beyond identity and ownership. The writing-when I've worked it this way-is the kind of information you take back from dreams. Or it's hypnotic writing rather than getting off on some sort of pleasure trip or intellectual trip.

It's so rich as a trope - the whole idea of the road and it being in terms of language, being an active experience.

Poets have to keep pushing, pushing, against the darkness, and write their way out of it as well.

There is a pretty interesting document called 'action writing.' Which is not all about spontaneity and first thought, best thought,' but a certain kind of attention to the smallest increments of the phonemes of language, The kind of power of connection, what he is able to do with language.

As a younger person you can come in through many, many gateways. It's like some huge Mandela. You can enter into this and get refreshed.