When I look at my life there are these streams, these things that have continuity from the fifties to now.

My mother started taking us to church when I was in seventh or eight grade. That was always a question, Do you believe in God?

I think Visions of Cody is the most radical book in terms of poetic stretch and the way Jack Kerouac is able to incorporate documentation and incorporate the live tape recording of Neal and so on.

The sense of the preciousness of the body - vehicle for poetry.

I had a student some years ago whose father had worked on the Manhattan Project. I had a student who had to escape this very intense, born-again fundamentalist Christian background that was very much like a cult and of course they struggle to get to Naropa. And they have cut themselves off. They don't look back.

We pride ourselves at Natrona - I mean, pride {ironically] - on developing a noncompetitive community. That's very important. The values that can come from that kind of meditative work combined with the creative work you do, combined with your activism, can come together.

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