Idea that all the beats are wildly liberal and progressive is ridiculous. You have people thinking for themselves and having certain affinities because of their upbringing and who their family are, their own people who were close to them who fought in these wars and so on. It's complicated. But they had that ability to continue the conversation.

We humans need to do better with our vast minds and alchemical powers. Future radial poetries might be more symbiotic with the rest of consciousness.

I still had to correct Allen Ginsberg at times when he called women girls. I'd say. Allen please, it's not politically correct.

I was going to public school in the post-World War II, the grey doldrum years. But I was in this extraordinary environment of Manhattan, of Greenwich Village, of bohemian parents.

I'm concerned about the overuse of spectacular places. And there's no real wilderness left and so there's a heartbreak there. You can go anywhere and be rescued through your cell phone and have some helicopter drop down.

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.

I think the idea of the lone tormented artist - which we can apply to others - I think that it needs to be revisited. Jack Kerouac needs to be seen in the context of a lot of other artistic activity.