The thing about great poetry is we have no defenses against it.

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.

In Germany, they have great difficulty with anything that smacks of cultism or messianic leadership. You can't talk about leadership in its charismatic forms.

The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.

There's a fierce practicality and empiricism which the whole imaginative, lyrical aspect of poetry comes from.

By definition, poetry works with qualities and dynamics that mainstream society is reluctant to face head-on. It's an interesting phenomenon that by necessity, poetry is just below the radar.