For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.

The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

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

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

By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.