And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.
Poetry is a beautiful way of expressing feelings - happy, sad, angry, caring. It's also a way that we share with other people, to help them with those feelings.
I'm quite sure that most writers would sustain real poetry if they could, but it takes devotion and talent.
When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry.
I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read.
I want to write a play. I'd like to do an original musical. I should probably put together a poetry collection.
We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality, because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other.
I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it.
'NewsHour' is very interested in poetry, but they're also interested in not just that something's cute to add on at the end of their programming, but something that actually is integrated into the news.
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
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.
When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep.
Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.
Well - I started writing - probably in the early 60s and by say '65-'66 I had read most of the poetry that had been published - certainly in the 20 years prior to that.
I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.
There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.
Instead of trying to come up and pontificate on what literature is, you need to talk with children, to teachers, and make sure they get poetry in the curriculum early.
When I was younger, I was so crazy about poetry that I didn't notice who was noticing. It seemed to me so tremendous and large.
One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.
In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium itself.
It's always a combination of physics and poetry that I find inspiring. It's hard to wrap your head around things like the Hubble scope.
