The medium of poetry is a human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is just as physical or bodily an art as dancing.

If a poem is written well, it was written with the poet's voice and for a voice. Reading a poem silently instead of saying a poem is like the difference between staring at sheet music and actually humming or playing the music on an instrument.

Art will not solve your problems. It will not enable you to live merrily.

The heart grows brutal feeding on fantasies.

Poetry’s medium is the individual chest and throat and mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.

Sometimes the ideas that mean the most to you will feel true long before you can quite formulate them or justify them.

To talk about the reality of life here and the work that you do here at the university.