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.

Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.

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'm never quite sure how the poem is going to resolve itself and that I'm always in some way surprised. I make a discovery in a poem as I write it.

Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?

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

I thought, after the Pulitzer, at least nothing will surprise me quite that much in my life. And another one happened. It was quite amazing.