I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore.

I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.

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

I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.

My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it.

I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out.

When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.