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.

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 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.

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.

Think of the road as a kind of zone and a site of incredible diversity.

My love of poetry comes from the "actualization" I experienced in the poetry of others. And I was reading it silently and there is deep pleasure in that intimacy, a mind-to-mind transfer going on. All the music is there, inherently. And mystery as well.

The sense of traveling this continent, also other continents. The friendship.I would say a non-competitive friendship. That is so amazing to me.