I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.

If the poem is so moving that even if you have no experience in that particular setting be it 1920's Harlem let's say. You still are so moved that you can put yourself in that position. That means that the writer has managed to go beyond the personal and touch the humanity in all of us and it's really a blast to read it because I realize how that this does hold true for the truly great poems.

The First Book: Go ahead, it won't bite. Well... maybe a little. More a nip, like. A tingle. It's pleasurable, really. You see, it keeps on opening. You may fall in. Sure, it's hard to get started; remember learning to use knife and fork? Dig in: you'll never reach bottom. It's not like it's the end of the world -- just the world as you think you know it.

The joy of working at something to find out what it means to me is what I grew up with.

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

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

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