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.

I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music. I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock'n roll.

If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children things that touch your soul.

Poetry is innocent not wise. It does not learn from experience because each poetic experience is unique.

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.

We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other.

I have epiphanies all the time because I'm always thinking. I'm a thinker. I'm always writing poetry I'm always coming to conclusions.

I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry I can do that.

Because people are very interested in my poetry in what I say.

My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there I know there will be people who will listen.

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary the only home.

That is what I did with Jack and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music.

I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it.

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.

Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.

Because in fact women feminists do read my poetry and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care that's what poetry is supposed to do.

Bad quirky poetry might be better than some of the good stuff because it really comes from the heart.

The more poetry you have in the head the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry as such.

Dealing with poetry is a daunting task simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.

I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things but they are the state of human existence.

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated unlike poetry which is more equal.