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.

This is all very nice, because the ideas that Jack and the Beat generation stood for are needed today more than ever. But I'm not so interested in nostalgia. I'm interested in the future.

When I was a boy I was my father.

Invent a new language anyone can understand.

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

I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.

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