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

I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.

If we’re going to solve the problems of the world, we have to learn how to talk to one another. Poetry is the language at its essence. It’s the bones and the skeleton of the language. It teaches you, if nothing else, how to choose your words.

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.

If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.

I wish someone had told me that my stories are really mine to tell. In other words, anything that I think is important or that has moved me has the ability to move somebody else.

I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.