Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the political changes in our lives are not the people who read poetry, unfortunately. Poetry not specifically aimed at political revolution, though, is beneficial in moving people toward that kind of action, as well as other kinds of action. A good poem makes me want to be active on as many fronts as possible.

Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven't fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking.

I always thought that writing poetry was in itself a political act.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.