And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing singing drinking dancing making love holding the streets picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.

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

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.

Poetry was invented as an mnemonic device to enable people to remember their prayers.

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.

Naming a baby is an act of poetry for many people the only creative moment of their lives.

So poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.

Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10 000 people.

More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry.

You can find poetry in your everyday life your memory in what people say on the bus in the news or just what's in your heart.

When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences I often read poetry.

I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry he has seen the presence of the creator.

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 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.

True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know.

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.

More people are reading poetry now than at any time in the history of the human race.

Poetry is at the centre of my life too emotionally speaking and intellectually speaking - it's just that I'm one of those people who enjoy doing other stuff as well.

It's like I understand images and some people understand poetry.

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

On July 26 1916 I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.

What other people may find in poetry or art museums I find in the flight of a good drive.

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.