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

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.

The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

We can invent only with memory.

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

The past is still visible. The buildings haven't changed, the layout of the streets hasn't changed. So memory is very available to me as I walk around.

In my fifty years of experience and memory, I have seen the most amazing increase in the standard of living of a people ever achieved anywhere in the world. This is why I am so sure that our system of free competition and industrial development is sound and must be preserved.

I've a grand memory for forgetting.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.

My memory of my mom is a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was a runway fashion model, and she was quite a glamorous woman.

The industry's memory is quite short, it's true.

The headline is the most important element of an ad. It must offer a promise to the reader of a believable benefit. And it must be phrased in a way to give it memory value.

The last four years have not diluted the memory or weakened the resolve of our citizens. Four years later, our hearts still hurt for the families whose loved ones were murdered that day.

Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.