I was on television a couple of years ago and the reporter asked me, "How does it feel being on mainstream media? It's not often poets get on mainstream media." I said, "Well I think you're the dominant media, the dominant culture, but you're not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture."

We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.

I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder

Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.

When you're young, everything seems like a romance. At 96, I can still feel romantic about publishing young unknown writers.

Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.

Poets, come out of your closets, Open your windows, open your doors, You have been holed up too long in your closed worlds... Poetry should transport the public/to higher places/than other wheels can carry it.