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.

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

I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.

My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.

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 am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate.

Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.