My father shared the ethos of many of the beat writers and was a friend of Allen Ginsberg. Probably for 25 years of my father's life, He had been an itinerant piano player and so traveled the road with bands and that sort of thing.

My older brother was involved in the folk movement. We would gather every weekend in Washington Park. The folk songs were so important to my reality.

Our need to reimagine our world through the vibratory larynx, that's what matters. Re-awaken the world to itself. Through ideas, pictures, sounds. Hold the mirror up to "nature."

What I propose for the "life of a poet" goes against the grain of the fossil fuel monoculture. Maybe the most revolutionary act these days is not to watch television and to read a book a day at least.

This will be a good time for poetry, you know, when things get darker and stranger and your very speech is being questioned and the sense of trusting that human thing.

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.

I took my vow to poetry; this is where I'm going to be. These are my people; this is my tribe. This is where I'm going to put my energy.