The act of writing itself isn't outrageous. And the institution subtly and insidiously works on you in such a way that though you seem to have freedom you become a servant. Your main issue is to get promoted to the next thing. Or get invited to a picnic. Or get tenure. Or get laid.

Some poems are art because of their passion.

Teaching poetry, teaching as such, is worthy - if back breaking.

I was ruined before I got started. I say ruined, but I could say blessed; I was too far gone to believe in it. And I'm shocked how generation after generation repeats the behavior.

Oppressed persons, oppressed cultures, tend to be more political, obviously, as are those with a rage for justice, or the crazy messianic desire.

You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached - not at all detached, although as I think of the word "detachment," I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.

In America it's a particular problem. The artist, particularly the poet, is just unacknowledged; if I can use that dumb word. Maybe it has always been that way. Maybe the only way he or she can be acknowledged is to be connected with some movement, be it religious or political.