Nothing will change until we demolish the "we-they" mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal.

The only thing we all agree on, virtually every poet in this country, is that this Administration is really frightening, and we want something done about it.

If only we could touch the things of this world at their center, if we could only hear tiny leaves of birch struggling toward April, then we would know.

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'm basically a poetry scholar, and I'm happier here in my studio with my row of Chinese dictionaries than I am, frankly, at Lincoln Center.

Of course, there are some people who behave rudely. Allen Ginsberg used to like to get up in public and take his clothes off. I don't do that, but I liked Allen Ginsberg. He was a nice guy.

I think a lot of American poets are swimming-pool Soviets. A lot of them have taken the comfortable, self-protective route too often. I know that I certainly have. That's easy to do.

George W. Bush is using language that's a mirror image of the language of Osama bin Laden when he says, "We have God on our side. This is the struggle of good against evil."

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.

Sometimes people come up and they get infatuated with some little brief imagistic poem or something, and they say, "Oh, I really like your Zen poems." And I say, "Which ones are not Zen poems?"

Each of us as poets, as decent suffering human beings, has to find a way to run our lives that is compassionate toward one another and toward our environment.

Expand and extend yourself to effectively fulfill purpose

No matter how long the journey takes, don’t give up. Keep travelling onwards.

Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.

Capitalism has turned human beings into commodities. To the owner of a restaurant: the cook and a bag of potatoes are equally important.

Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!

I think I always have been someone who likes to push at the edges of things, looking for something different.

I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.

Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

... the fishermen of Port Sonas care only for the two things, fishing and women. And there's some that are no' that keen on the fishing.

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law