The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now

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.

Libraries are where it all begins.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.

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

Nothing is too small. Nothing is too, quote-unquote, ordinary or insignificant. Those are the things that make up the measure of our days, and they're the things that sustain us. And they're the things that certainly can become worthy of poetry.