When I was born here in Gulfport in 1966, my parents' interracial marriage was still illegal. And it was very hard to drive around town with my parents, to be out in public with my parents.

I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it.

The act of making poetry is an act of hope.

A man's pursuit of knowledge is greater than his shortcomings, the limits of his vision.

What's left is palimpsest—one memory bleeding into another, overwriting it.

The experience of poetry could bring my mother back to me. Poetry offers a different kind of solace - here on earth.

What is love?/ One name for it is knowledge.

You can get there from here, though there's no going home. Everywhere you go will be somewhere you've never been. "Theories of Time and Space

I don't like a kind of workshop that is about editing--I don't want to sit there and be an editor. I don't want to tell someone how to "fix" a poem.

the wages of empire is myopia

I want to be the best advocate and promoter for poetry that I can be.

Life is a journey, Frannie darling, " Feagan had once told me. "Choose well those with whom you travel."As always, I've followed Feagan's counsel.

Illiteracy is the number one promoter of ignorance.

The need itself is not the call.

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

Love is a great beautifier.

I have this idyllic love life, but my mind just won't accept that. I would like to bring a new guy home every night. I try to make humor out of that situation.

But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?

The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ.

Live your life in a sublime spirit of confidence and determination.

I make a lot of money in my life, 50.000 dollars are nothing.