When I shut off the verbal, I like to escape into the visual.

I don't like speed. I would have made a terrible Futurist. Even when I did take drugs, I never liked amphetamines and much preferred the slow taffy-pull of time that you get with opiates.

I tend to like poems that are short as well as funny. I love Joe Brainard and Aram Saroyan. And I think their sense of humor and minimalist approach are pretty radical.

In a machine, every part has a function. In a poem, every word needs to be there.

I like to look at the interface between words and pictures and wonder about which comes first, a sort of chicken-or-egg type of question.

The earth has always supported me in all my endeavors. I trust it.

I tend to be a pretty spacey and scattered person, so anything that makes me feel "grounded" comes as a welcome relief.

I think the more stability a person has, the more they can follow esoteric or intellectual pursuits.

The inner and outer, the visible and invisible, the abstract and concrete - you've got to get the balance right (not that I do, but it's something to aim for).

Technology sounds quick and easy, but it ends up taking up too much of your time.

Sometimes you get lit students that know a lot about the canon but virtually nothing about contemporary poetry and vice versa. I like to mix things up.

A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.

People who go to work every day, make sacrifices to raise families, and get through life without hurting other people if they can help it-those are the real heros.

Build Yourself and He Will Come!

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a 'peace conference', you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.

As a child, the paddy field was my playground.

I want to be Michael Clifford for Halloween.

You will never solve poverty without solving water and sanitation.

Allow ourselves to do as Ram Dass said in his delicious phrase "Be Here Now." If you are here now you cannot fall into falsely constructed gender projections.

You all know I have terminal cancer - and I have a lot of it. But what you may not know is that stress induces its spread and induces its activity. Stress may even bring it on.