In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for as for me I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms so thinking about distance thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art in poetry in music of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful moving or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.

Short fiction is the medium I love the most because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that though lacking a novel's length satisfies the reader.

I'd never really been content with just churning out these slim volumes every three or four years. I've always tried to think of poetry as an active ingredient in the language rather than just something that appears between the covers of thin books.

I do actually dabble in a bit of poetry! And I'm yet to pen a script but it is something that I've been telling myself I want to do.

That poetry survived in its formal agencies finally and that prose survived to get something said.

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is so far as the poetry is concerned to know something that may be entertaining even delightful but is certainly inessential.

Poetry is something that happens in universities in creative writing programs or in English departments.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

A lot of people think 'I'll give acting or poetry or filmmaking a try. And if it doesn't work out I'll go get a law degree do something else that's more practical.' For me I went the reverse way. I lived the back-up plan.

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.

The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

Poetry isn't a profession it's a way of life. It's an empty basket you put your life into it and make something out of that.

Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that for a minute the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.

There is something about poetry beyond prose logic there is mystery in it not to be explained but admired.

If a poem is not memorable there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

It's something we guys have all done. Made tapes for girls trying to impress them to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it because you're too awkward to do it.

When you're going through something whether it's a wonderful thing like having a child or a sad thing like losing somebody you often feel like 'Oh my God I'm so overwhelmed I'm dealing with this huge thing on my own.' In fact poetry's a nice reminder that no everybody goes through it. These are universal experiences.