“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.”

“Poetry is a street fighter. It has sharp elbows. It can look after itself. Poetry can't be used for manipulation it's why you never see good poetry in advertising. ”

“It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life.”

“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.”

“Poetry carries the imagery which is large enough for the kind of life we want for ourselves.”

“Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future.”

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

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

“Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.”

“All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.”

“A good poem brims with reflected beauty and even a bracing, beautiful ugliness. At the center of our lives, in the midst of the busyness and the forgetting, is a story that makes sense when everything extraneous has been taken away.”