The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.

For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.

The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.

I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.