The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out.

If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you're simply using a pen to record what you have thought out. In a poem, the pen is more like a flashlight, a Geiger counter, or one of those metal detectors that people walk around beaches with.

I would rather write or record something great and have it overlooked than do mediocre work and have it be popular.

I'm a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I'd rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.

Rather than thinking, 'If I do this, and in five years I'll be where I want to be,' you're better just doing something that makes you happy now.

I did write a letter to the archdiocese who'd banned the song, Only the Good Die Young, asking them to ban my next record.