While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

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

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

It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

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

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.