My teaching was animated by what I was reading and being excited by as a poet.

If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.

Write whatever you like!

My body was braille for the creeping influences.

A writer is not different from a reader, in that the common ragbag of orthodoxies and assumptions is what a poet has to work with as well.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

I suppose I did feel a certain public pressure always.