I am a self-appointed ambassador for poetry.

We can think for ourselves and we can awaken the world to a greater consciousness.

[Jack] Kerouac looking at the fellaheen worlds. Looking at other cultures. Welcoming it, curious. Really stepping outside his own limited, whatever that narrow world was. It's amazing to think we can do it. We can have that same kind of trajectory of mind.

I think of my father growing up in South Jersey, the son of second-generation German immigrant glassblowers. The opportunities for him of feeling that aspiration, that yearning, get out of the small town, connect to a larger world, get yourself to New York, wanting to play the piano at every opportunity, bonding with people who were on a similar path, ending up in Provincetown, which was kind of nexus for nonconformity, and artistic dropout reality.

The text for me is the musical score. I'm the instrument. My voice is the instrument. My voice is articulating the sounds which are coming through the imaginings and visitations in my head, and I'm making these sounds but I've selected them from an ocean of sound.

I hope I'm not implying role of contemporary poet for myself, although there's a kind of resonant paradigm. It's traditionally a difficult role.

You really felt a radical shift in the advance of a poetics that had really been engendered by [Walt] Whitman. This was very exciting. I wanted to work in this environment.