If not then you must be trying to hear us and in such cases we cannot be heard. We remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five senses cannot sense the fact of our existence. And that's the only fact. In fact, there are no facts.

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.

If you're just addressing your own emotions and challenging yourself to find some sort of harmonious sense of being in life and questioning authority and questioning what's given and questioning what's expected of you, you're already on the cusp of finding something in yourself, and maybe waking something in somebody else.

Art can play a major role. I look at art as an alternative source of energy, the same way we might look at wind or solar or lithium batteries.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written

The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community.

More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry