In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart.

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

The music just tends to be a vehicle for that poetry.

It's just poetry, beauty and love. How hard can that be to act?

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.

When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.