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.

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.

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

The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.

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.