The ancient Greek oral poets all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the Muse to help them remember.

There is probably no oral society that fails to mark the spatial distinction of left and right, peculiar as this distinction may be.

I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.

I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker.

The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.

I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.