When I was young, I was older than I am today.

If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.

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.

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing

Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.

I think if you put something in a file that says "war poems" or "love poems" that you already restrict the way in which the poem might move.

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.