The Earth Forgives The Previous Year Every

If You Were Making Poetry Out Of Convictions - Trying To Convince Other People - You Were In The Territory Of Rhetoric, And That Wasn't The Territory Of Poetry. I Think That's Pretty Smart. I Think That It Doesn't Need To Be Altogether True, But That Was My Starting Place.

I Suppose There's Something To Be Said For The Sheer Reinforcement Of Our Beliefs, But Really I Think Poetry Is More Useful As Disenchantment Than Enchantment.

Poetry Is A Fireplace In Summer Or A Fan In Winter.

My Suspicion Is That Once You Have Literacy In Place, The Readership Has Not Changed Very Much.

If You're Going To Get Up To Walt Whitman And Robert Frost And Langston Hughes And Sylvia Plath You've Got To Figure Out How You Put People In Possession Of Their Heritage. To Do That You Have To Talk About How They're Being Taught, And The Imagination Of Community The People Who Are Running Our Government Have.