“Poetry seems especially like nothing else so much as itself. Poetry is not like, it is the very lining of the inner life.”

“In fiction, the characters have their own lives. They may start as a gloss on the author’s life, but they move on from there. In poetry, especially confessional poetry but in other poetry as well, the poet is not writing characters so much as emotional truth wrapped in metaphor. Bam! Pow! A shot to the gut.”

“...some say Twitter seems trite and lacks weightiness - but in actuality, it lends itself to poetry - it can be very compressed and intense...”

“Poetry has an immediate effect on the mind. The simple act of reading poetry alters thought patterns and the shuttle of the breath. Poetry induces trance. Its words are chant. Its rhythms drumbeats. Its images become the icons of the inner eye. Poetry is more than a description of the sacred experience; it carries the experience itself.”

“A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.”

“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business.”