When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, not his teaching.

One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through the entire culture; that is why suburban children want rap music.

Tragedies are about the depths that call up to certain men and insist that they descend.

One could say the higher the spirit goes, the more deeply the soul sinks down into the waters of melancholy and tragedy. Drowning in that water is as sweet as rising.

It's good to have poems that begin with tea and end with God.

You say to yourself, Well, this poem isn't going to be any good, but I'll write it anyway.

The best poems take long journeys. I like poetry best that journeys--while remaining in the human scale--to the other world, which may be a place as easily overlooked as a bee's wing