I guess that would have been 1968. I was a freshman in college and I wasn't writing good poems, but I was at least trying to write poems then.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

But, something has to be worked through formally as well as emotionally. Now, when those two things come together I've got something, I think, that I can be proud of.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.

I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.

A unique human trait is that we try to find meaning in the things that happen to us.

And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.

Never lose hope, though everything's bleak, though you feel so weak. Never shrink back, never look back, especially when you know that you're fighting for the right reasons, for the right people.

In any case, though, I believe that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.

Music belongs to everybody. Having a little clique of the industry tell us what our culture is... I don't think that's healthy. And the Internet is helping us get away from that.

As someone who played music and never got famous, and remembers little fragments of that, I don't remember life as a dramatic flamboyant thing.

You can never get more by saying "No." You can hold a current position by saying "No", but you can only move forward by saying "Yes."

I wouldn't consciously pursue trying to make something for the charts. It's just not in my scope now. I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.

Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness.