The problem with describing poets as legislators is that at that level of politics - politics as political invention - poets have no special skills and are not apt to.

Once you figure out something about the watershed, you'll find out where the schools are going to hell, and the kids aren't learning, and there is no money. Social issues, class issues, and environmental issues were all connected.

Where politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Environmental regulation looked like it was going to be under serious attack, and they were giving all of those speeches about getting government off people's backs.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

It's the same with this idea of a literate public, and also of a democracy in which people have access to and really read the best books. It turns out that even when you create this kind of environment, maybe only 10 percent of the people want to read those books.