Quotes About Connection

Ginsberg's Collected Poems contains a wonderful poem about making it with Neal Cassady.

Garrison Keillor read several of my poems on 'The Writer's Almanac' and I've heard from listeners nationally and internationally. That's one of the great gifts of email.

I do think that all of us think in poems.

I think I felt at some point that I couldn't understand poetry or that it was beyond me or it didn't speak to my experience. I think that was because I hadn't yet found the right poems to invite me in.

Once your poems are completed, you send them into the world. You don't write for a coterie of other writers - you write for other human beings.

I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day.

If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.

The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.

If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.

A poet can feel free, in my estimation, to write a poem for himself. Or a painter can paint a painting for himself. You can write a short story for yourself. But for me, comedy by its nature is communal. If other people don't get it, I'm not sure why you are doing it.

As fire kindled by fire, so is the poet's mind kindled by contact with a brother poet.

Are you really going to see Lewis? One of the few people it's worth getting excited over, I think. I know he is a good poet. I daresay he never heard of me, but I wish you would tell him that his work is the joy of my life.

If people connect me with the Romantics in general, they probably connect me most with Keats. But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.

My dad wanted to name me after Rainier Maria Rilke, the poet.

I am a member of the Muskogee people. I'm a poet, a musician, a dreamer of sorts, a questioner. Like everyone else, I'm looking for answers of some sort or the other.

The best poems come from the world, go through the poet, and go back in to the world.

Every contemporary poet is a door to another poet.

Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it's this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.

I saw an e-mail from one guy who's about 23 to one of peers. His parting sign-off was 'Don't let the bedbugs bite.' Now that's really poetic.

When you are romancing a woman in a relationship, it should be poetic. It should have layers.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world.

Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it's always been the language of bridges.

I chose poetry. Actually, poetry chose me.