We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.

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

People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable.

My best times are midnight to six actually. I'll leaf through my notebooks and if something catches my eye and I feel like I want to transfer it from the notebook to the page, I do, and then comes this very strange process which is difficult to describe in that I'll write until I get stuck or I can't go any further or I'm boring myself or whatever and then I might go to another poem.

Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.