It's enormously cheering to get a good review by someone who seems to understand your work.

It seems everything is so full of possibilities one can hardly take it all in.

Politics is there the way men and women are there, the way the Atlantic Ocean is there. Sometimes I've written about politics specifically, I mean about politics as it's understood on television and in newspapers.

I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

When you get an idea, go and write. Don't waste it in conversation.