I still believe in this country, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry.

Now I must wait and be still and say nothing I don't know, nothing I haven't lived over and over, and that's everything.

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

I'm afraid we live at the mercy of a power, maybe a God, without mercy. And yet we find it, as I have, from others.

I was very lucky to have a mother who encouraged me to become a poet.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.

Listen to these young poets and you'll discover the voice of the present and hear the voice of the future before the future is even here.