Confronted with the choice the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.

The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century all natural disasters and all automobile accidents combined.

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so.

I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.

She was the Judy Garland of American poetry.

I think the best American poetry is the poetry that utilizes the resources of poetry rather than exploits the defects or triumphs of the poet's personality.

I would say that American poetry has always been a poetry of personal testimony.

I don't like political poetry and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that I think it is missing the point of the American tradition which is always apolitical even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.

From reading a previous answer you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape sometimes out of one's cultural myths and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art and American poetry is not excluded from this.

American poetry like American painting is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

I don't think rap really fits in to 'American Idol' in the sense that I believe rap is an art form in itself more akin to poetry more akin to drama if you will.

There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals but even as I withdrew into this reading I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction and I would not have predicted that.

Some people swear by writing courses but whether it really helps American poetry I have doubts.

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

I have a pet lizard named Puff five goldfish - named Pinky Brain Jowels Pearl and Sandy an oscar fish named Chef two pacus an albino African frog named Whitey a bonsai tree four Venus flytraps a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.