Poets should speak out against what we see as the assault against our Constitution and the warmongering that's going on. I'm perfectly willing to lay down my life for my Constitution, but I am not willing to take a life for it or any other reason because I think killing people is counterproductive.

It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed and sit on it, but they can't.

I would say that my great political awakening was really born on Okinawa, reading Albert Camus: the "Neither Victims nor Executioners" essay and The Rebel. I was an eighteen-year-old kid. I hated myself. I hated my life. I thought nobody wanted me.

Most of the ugly wars in history have been wars of religion. And there's nothing more dangerous than someone with religious certitude who creates consequences in the world that to me are simply inexcusable.

I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

Korea's first Zen Master-poet wrote simple yet elegant poetry of the world he inhabited, both physically and spiritually, and of daily insights-a pause along the way for a deep clear breath, a moon-viewing moment, a seasonal note or a farewell poem to a departing monk. His poems speak softly and clearly, like hearing a temple bell that was struck a thousand years ago.

I got interested in Zen when I was a teenage beatnik on the streets of San Francisco. And it was my interest in Zen, in part, that got me into the Marine Corps, because that was a ticket to Asia. So I spent a couple of years on Okinawa and began reading and thinking about how I wanted to go about conducting my life.