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.

It's so rich as a trope - the whole idea of the road and it being in terms of language, being an active experience.

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.

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."

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.

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 need a world-wide Department of Peace.