There are men who can write poetry and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write.

A lyric it is true is the expression of personal emotion but then so is all poetry and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry differing from each other in essence is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and yes read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there I know there will be people who will listen.

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and cares about the words.

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

There is no gilding of setting sun or glamor of poetry to light up the ferocious and endless toil of the farmers' wives.

There is a wonderful Hungarian literature especially in lyric poetry.

That is what I did with Jack and that's why he liked to do the readings with me because he knew I was there for him and for our ability to blend the poetry and the music.

As for political poetry as it's usually defined it seems there's very little good political poetry.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

I used to write sonnets and various things and moved from there into writing prose which incidentally is a lot more interesting than poetry including the rhythms of prose.

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge visionary poetry in it.

There are so many things that poetry is about one of which is memory.

And there are a lot more people reading poetry but there are not so many people reading an individual poet.

If there's no money in poetry neither is there poetry in money.

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.

If you don't mark your successes the day your ship comes in could be just another day at the office and there's no poetry in that.

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.

It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do I'll write a bad poem.