As I got older, I really got into Tupac's poetry, his books and just learning about his life and what he was into.

Let me read you some of my poetry. My poetry just takes me to another level.

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology.

I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.

Poetry must be made by all and not by one.

So much of my poetry begins with something that I can describe in visual terms, so thinking about distance, thinking about how life begins and what might be watching us.

Poetry criticism at its worst today is mean in spirit and spiteful in intent, as if determined to inflict the wound that will spur the artist to new heights if it does not cripple him or her.

The older I've got the less I find myself going back and re-reading or really reading new fiction or poetry.