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.

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

If you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for bullshit.

I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.

Poetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalytpic times, even if this means sounding apocaltypic.

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.

Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.