I have some very personal feelings about politics but I don't get into it because I do comedy already.

The message that I gave on the - on the steps today was that you need to stand for those things that are right and empower the individual. Believe in the power of one person. Don't believe that you can't do it. Everybody wants - everybody wants a shot. That we can all agree on. Beyond that it becomes politics. I'm not talking politics.

I think that politics could be a positive thing. My beef is that people focus on the personal aspect of a politician too much. They should focus on the results.

We discussed politics but we also talked about the importance of hard work personal responsibility living within your means keeping your word. Those lessons stay with you throughout your life.

Consul - in American politics a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

I think that you can disagree with people and debate over their positions with issues without engaging in the politics of personal destruction.

You know they say the most dangerous person of the world is a member of the United States Congress just home from a three-day fact-finding trip.

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.

A lyric it is true is the expression of personal emotion but then so is all poetry and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry differing from each other in essence is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.

That's a wonderful change that's taken place and so most poetry today is published if not directly by the person certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself working with his friends.

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.

American poetry like American painting is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

I don't like to boast but I have probably skipped more poetry than any other person of my age and weight in this country.

However I learned something. I thought that if the young person the student has poetry in him or her to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching I think.

Everyone needs solitude especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

Perhaps no person can be a poet or even enjoy poetry without a certain unsoundness of mind.

I never thought I'd be doing poetry books. I never really studied poetry. But the first one I did was after my mother died and I realized that people sort of think and talk about her style and fashion but in fact what made her the person she was was really her love of reading and ideas.

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But of course only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.