For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousne….

Actions have consequences. Ignorance about the nature of those actions does not free a person from responsibility for the consequences. (28).

My wife's dying upstairs and I can't do anything about it. I look in her face and I see the memories there. I see how I hurt her and how I said the w….

Love doesn't need a reason. Hate needs a reason..

I like it to be quiet, and it usually occurs in the morning. There are three or four places in my house where I can write and I like to keep moving a….

There's a Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas. He was a very crotchety, strange man, but his poems are wonderful. He was nominated for the Nobel in the 1990s but….

I'm reading a manuscript by Rodney Jones, "Village Prodigies",it's one of the best contemporary poetry books I've ever read ever..

Most women are more into real estate than sex. They want to own you..

It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him..

Let's say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he lov….

Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all. The comic element works as a surprise. It is unexpected and ene….

My poems always begin with a metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound. And I rarely know the nature of the metaph….

One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent..

A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms..

I can't believe there is a poet who hasn't eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day deciding it was sheer lunacy. It's part of ….

Sometimes someone will tell me about an author I've never heard of before and that will send me to that person. That's how I discovered Thomas Bernha….

There are many reasons for violence. This is just something that sometimes happens. We'd see it in treatment centers - the child who'd suffered somet….

Reading a good poem can give me a far bigger kick than a novel. But it's not something I can keep doing. It would be like shooting up 10 times a day..

Each thing I do, I rush through, so I can do something else..

When a philosopher, scientist, or psychologist discusses the discrepancy between the actual and the ideal, he or she attempts to convince us with the….

These people you used to see every day, friends or acquaintances, after a while they become as distant as any stranger, people you suddenly recall la….