Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

It seems like every ten years there's a book that says that poetry used to be popular, and now it's not, but we really have no way of knowing, in terms of relative size of audience and other things, exactly who readers were.

Poetry, when it takes sides, when it proposes solutions, isn't any smarter than anybody else.

There's very little solid research on readership, yet people make pronouncements about it all the time.

The first book that really knocked me out was the 'Brothers Karamazov.' I read it when I was a senior in high school.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

Our history doesn't look at our own violence, the violence in our own past, and we go out and repeat it someplace else.