Speaking of people I had to exclude: Hank Williams. which is to say, songs are part of lyric poetry in my book, my thinking. In fact they are the urgent element of poetry in our time, they carry the most emotion for the most people in our culture. everyone LOVES poetry, because we all love (one form or another) of rock and roll (be it folk to emo to rap). It's all rock and roll and all lyric poetry.

With "poets dead and gone" as Keats says in "Mermaid Tavern" they are alive and talking to us and us to them.

Every breath is a resurrection.

To me, poetry is about survival first of all. Survival of the individual self, survival of the emotional life.

Another way of saying "put it in the Book" would be that each poem we write pops up in the city of poetry, where anyone can visit it. Just as we visit the poems written before us. Go to Dickinson's house, or Li Po's or whomever we think has something to say to us that might help or be beautiful.

When you're a young poet, reading is a search for your lost family.

I believe in poetry as a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive.