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.

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

What is ironic is that Allen Ginsberg's importance was in its twilight for so many years that it took his death to bring it to the front page. He electrified an entire world!

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.

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

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

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.