It is very difficult for people to come in contact with their own emotions and their own sensibilities.

I like poems that are complex.

The problem, for me, with the writing programs is that they produce a terrible uniformity of product.

If I were brave enough to say so, I'd like to think that I had written some poems that people are not going to forget.

I just think that some version of the past in our culture is going to rise up and become dominant.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.

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

For instance, it's a little better now than it was two or three years ago, but something like 70% of the poems I receive seem to be written in the present indicative.

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.

In my youth, I found that I was quite often inspired and pushed forward by what I read.

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

Frost is the most sophisticated of poets.

But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.

Poetry should be able to reach everybody, and it should be able to appeal to all levels of understanding.

In order to understand what they need to understand, in order to write what they write, they have to be free. And yet, they aren't ever free. They are not free because they are not free of the constrictions their art puts on them.

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

People are talking about the Internet as though it is going to change the world. It's not going to change the world. It's not going to change the way we think, and it's not going to change the way we feel.

The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.

It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose.

The trouble with the performance poets is that they don't seem to have read anything. So there is not a real sense of the poetic tradition in their work.

It is very difficult for people to come in contact with their own emotions and their own sensibilities.

If poets were realistic, they wouldn't be poets.

I like poems that are little games.

Poetry is composing for the breath.

But there is some way in which poets believe that and this is dangerous, too believe that their calling gives them a certain freedom. A certain freedom to live in a free way.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such.

They need to learn poetry. They don't need to learn about poetry. They don't need to be told how to interpret poetry. They don't need to be told how to understand poetry. They need to learn it.

But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most.

The reason one writes poems is so that your poem will be remembered.

Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.

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

I would like to be proud of having written some poems that will be remembered, but I will never know whether I will have any reason to be proud of that.

And rather than hide that, I would rather put that out on the radio and let someone see the full range of emotions. If you're going to be strong on the radio, you got to let it all out, even the ugly stuff. And you can't apologize for it.

Obviously, in dealing with a relationship, sexuality has to be involved, and jealousy and emotions like that. And I don't know, I've always been intrigued by those emotions.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

When on the set of a film, you have to play natural for entire scenes in a very unnatural environment. You have to express emotions and interact with other actors and also use your voice.

Emotions are the fuel to really move you along - that's the only way you can create music. If you don't feel any emotions, it's not going to happen.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Most of the animated films I watched, the emotions are all prepackaged like canned music, the hand actions, the sighs.

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

The name of Jesus, like a secret charm, awakened similar emotions in the hearts of all the converts, and called immediately into action every feeling of moral loveliness, and every desire of dutiful obedience, which constitute Christian purity.

Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis.

Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions.

My weaknesses are my jumps. The reason is that although I land them in practice, when I actually compete or perform, I should let my body go and stabilize my mind better. Also, I need to work on not letting negative thoughts and emotions get to me on the ice.

The fact that biological, or "natural" rules might help in the creation of a computer generated work of art is interesting, but even a wonderful work of art made in this fashion isn't the same as a person, with all his or her experiences and emotions involved, making art.

The concept of reason itself appears as an artificial attempt to separate intellectual powers from the frustrations, emotions, and accidents which cause events; the concept of reason is viewed as facade to prevent change.