I had many teachers that were great positive role models and taught me to be a good person and stand up and be a good man. A lot of the principals they taught me still affect how I act sometimes and it's 30 years later.

But you see our society is still trapped in this binary black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.

More brands are waking up to their social responsibility and doing good work through cause marketing campaigns. Yet too many still go about it the wrong way. I mean 'wrong' in two senses. Firstly they are marketing ineffectively and secondly as a consequence their positive social impact is not maximized.

Good thing we've still got politics in Texas - finest form of free entertainment ever invented.

Local politics like everything else are not what they used to be. But the fact is that our political system - like our physical existence - still breaks down along geographical lines.

Public life is regarded as the crown of a career and to young men it is the worthiest ambition. Politics is still the greatest and the most honorable adventure.

I still love following and thinking about politics. I enjoy recommending important journalism I read or see from other sources.

If acknowledging that racial misgivings and misunderstandings are still a part of politics and life in America I plead guilty.

And yet there are still people in American politics who for some reason cling to this belief that America is better off adopting the economic policies of nations whose people who immigrate here from there.

There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings as traitors... I mean it.

But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose I can only do what I am given and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and yes read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

Still language is resilient and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

Poetry is life distilled.

In the total darkness poetry is still there and it is there for you.

A poem in form still has to have voice gesture a sense of discovery a metaphoric connection as any poetry does.