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 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.

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

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

You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.

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.

While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.