Poems don't have to rhyme... Poems are about beauty and emotion; in other words poems are about feelings.

Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.

It's not a ladder we're climbing, it's literature we're producing. . . . We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.

If culture was a railroad, I can see the tracks running from the Spirituals to the Hip Hop Nation.

You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.

If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.

Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.