Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

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

One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits.

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.

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry

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.

Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine.