When you look at our world the truth is that we're all under the influence of politics.

I don't for the life of me understand how anybody could contemplate the results of the 2000 election in the US and say that electoral politics doesn't matter any more and that Ralph Nader was right when he said there is no difference between the two parties.

I understand the damage the expenses crisis has done to Parliament and the paramount importance of restoring trust in our politics.

London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble we had severe energy problems we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who started a bombing campaign in English cities politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.

I understand the process of politics and the game of television.

George Clooney's 'Ides of March' could be the most under-appreciated movie of the year. In 20 years they're gonna go back and say 'Oh that was American politics in that time period.' I follow politics I love it and that movie is so authentic.

I guess probably in my time in politics it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community despite being subscription television's most valuable customers they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options.

If acknowledging that racial misgivings and misunderstandings are still a part of politics and life in America I plead guilty.

I think politics is important. It's how we run our society. I think it should be natural to have an interest in the subject and I almost don't understand why some people don't.

Politics as the word is commonly understood are nothing but corruptions.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

Alliance - in international politics the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

That's the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound and when you understand it it is only ridiculous.

I think it was T.S. Eliot who talked about good poetry being felt before it's understood. I believe that. There are some bands where I love their lyrics but I don't have a clue what they're on about.

I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats.

Still language is resilient and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

The more poetry you have in the head the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all.

They need to learn poetry. They don't need to learn about poetry. They don't need to be told how to interpret poetry. They don't need to be told how to understand poetry. They need to learn it.

Poetry should be able to reach everybody and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.

Dealing with poetry is a daunting task simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.

I see people who talk about America and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul to its poetry. I see polarization reductionism and superficiality.

On the other hand if there's an underlying core of poetry that I go to I go to the sea. I've lived on the sea all my life. I live on the sea in Cape Breton.

Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground poets in schools football clubs zoos.