Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.

We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.

I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.