Take The Time To Write. You Can

At Some Level, You Have To Be Able To Say, "this Is My Task." It's In Small, Local Ways That You Keep Yourself Alive And Refresh Ideas That Are Always Going Into Dead Abstraction.

Sometimes You Have To Be Less Ashamed About Writing A Bad Poem Than You Would Be About Being Silent.

I Think That My Responsibility To My Art Is To Try To Get It Right Or To Push The Boundaries Of What I'm Able To Do In Any Way.

The Thing I Learned Is That The Work Is Getting Done By People Who Dig In And Work On A Particular Project: The People Who Spend 20 Years Sustaining A Theater For Black Teenagers In Chicago; The People Who Reintroduce Sticklebacks Into Strawberry Creek In Berkeley And Then Wait Patiently For The First Egrets To Show Up.

There Isn't A River Or Creek In The Country - Or There Are Very Few - That Doesn't Have Some Small Group Of People Working On A Restoration Or Creek Cleanup Project. Let Me Give You One Example That's A Great Metaphor: In Washington, D.c., There Is A Group Called The Anacostia Watershed Society. Two Rivers Converge And Define Washington - One Which Everybody Knows About, The Potomac, And The Anacostia, Which They Don't. The Anacostia Is One Of The Most Polluted Urban Rivers In The Country.