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

I arrived in San Francisco in January 1951. After the Second World War, the population was so uprooted. Soldiers came back home for brief periods and took off again. So the population was very fluid, and suddenly it was as if the continent tilted west. The whole population slid west. It took 10 years for America to coalesce into a new culture. And the new culture happened in San Francisco, not New York.

I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn, that Bridge was too much for me.

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

I think if there's a great depression there might be some hope.

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

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