As for political poetry as it's usually defined it seems there's very little good political poetry.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

I used to write sonnets and various things and moved from there into writing prose which incidentally is a lot more interesting than poetry including the rhythms of prose.

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge visionary poetry in it.

There are so many things that poetry is about one of which is memory.

And there are a lot more people reading poetry but there are not so many people reading an individual poet.

If there's no money in poetry neither is there poetry in money.

On the other hand if there's an underlying core of poetry that I go to I go to the sea. I've lived on the sea all my life. I live on the sea in Cape Breton.

If you don't mark your successes the day your ship comes in could be just another day at the office and there's no poetry in that.

There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do I'll write a bad poem.

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

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones gut this is only in part true.

The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working class and everyone from it I've met and think they're incredibly witty inventive - there's a lot of poetry there.