The nerds are my favourite sort of boys - any guy with a passion - whether it be physics or film or writing or poetry even I think it's super sweet and it's very attractive for a female.

I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry.

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth to learn how to do that to find out what you really feel and what you really think.

I don't think it's always good to read lots of poetry.

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.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written.

I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play it has a poignancy to it.

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.

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

While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working class and everyone from it I've met and think they're incredibly witty inventive - there's a lot of poetry there.

A lot of people think 'I'll give acting or poetry or filmmaking a try. And if it doesn't work out I'll go get a law degree do something else that's more practical.' For me I went the reverse way. I lived the back-up plan.

I know I'm not a wordsmith. And I don't write poetry. Sometimes I think I should because it's really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels.

I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves but which they identify with from the interior.

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to what they were doing why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

And the second question can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry but film writing brilliant film writing is a talent - you can't just do it like that.

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching I think.

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.

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

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers but what you can't teach them is the very essence of 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.