The Poet Like An Acrobat Climbs On

Don't Patronize The Chain Bookstores. Every Time I See Some Author Scheduled To Read And Sign His Books At A Chain Bookstore, I Feel Like Telling Him He's Stabbing The Independent Bookstores In The Back.

Poetry Is The Shadow Cast By Our Streetlight Imaginations.

To Say One Is Revolutionary Is A Little Like Saying One Is A Zen Buddhist - If You Say You Are, You Probably Aren't.

You Can Publish A Poem You Think Is A Very Important Poem, And You Don't Hear A Word From Anyone. [...] You Can Publish A Book Of Poetry By Dropping It Off A Cliff And Waiting To Hear An Echo. Quite Often, You'll Never Hear A Thing. So Doing That, Using Older Work, Puts It In A Context, And That Sort Of Forces The Reader To Realize What Its Importance Is-if It Has Any. Everything Needs A Context. You're Not Going To Recognize A Poet Unless You Have A Context.

This Is All Very Nice, Because The Ideas That Jack And The Beat Generation Stood For Are Needed Today More Than Ever. But I'm Not So Interested In Nostalgia. I'm Interested In The Future.