I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important.

If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

I certainly derived my skills as a prose writer from my scrutiny of poetry and of the individual word. But schools don't do things like that anymore - tracking words down to their roots.

Sometimes the beauty is easy. Sometimes you don't have to try at all. Sometimes you can hear the wind blow in a handshake. Sometimes there's poetry written right on the bathroom wall.

Dancing is the poetry of the foot.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is, prose = words in their best order - poetry = the best words in the best order.

Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.