Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace' One grand boulevard with trees with one grand cafe in sun with strong black coffee in very small cups. One not necessarily very beautiful man or woman who loves you. One fine day.

A lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into print.

We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn't have any money for lawyers.

I certainly was surprised to be named Poet Laureate of this far-out city on the left side of the world, and I gratefully accept, for as I told the Mayor, "How could I refuse?" I'd rather be Poet Laureate of San Francisco than anywhere because this city has always been a poetic center, a frontier for free poetic life, with perhaps more poets and more poetry readers than any city in the world.

The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors; everything depends on the money.