'Milk and Honey' was written with me being honest to myself, kind of pulling at the things that I hear the most and saying that out loud, and you know, that thing that we hear the most is most universal, and so that rings true with all folks. The language used in the poetry is extremely, extremely accessible.
Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.
At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.
What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.
The Bible is very resonant. It has everything: creation, betrayal, lust, poetry, prophecy, sacrifice. All great things are in the Bible, and all great writers have drawn from it and more than people realise, whether Shakespeare, Herman Melville or Bob Dylan.
Poetry is almost like my foundation for everything. I almost feel I am a better actor and writer because of it.
There are better ways we can transform this virulent hatred - by living our ideals, the Peace Corps, exchange students, teachers, exporting our music, poetry, blue jeans.
The biggest problem is people are afraid of poetry, think they can't understand it or that it will be boring.
I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes.
Poetry. I read Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Hirschfield. I like to read Billy Collins out loud.
There's a love of rhetorical skill in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden doesn't just go on tape cassettes and say, 'America sucks.' He recites poetry; he finds things that 'America sucks' rhymes with.
One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.
Against barbarity, poetry can resist only by confirming its attachment to human fragility like a blade of grass growing on a wall while armies march by.
I'm quite a softy, yes. I have a blank spot with respect to visual art, but I have perhaps a compensating hypersensitivity to poetry and music.
There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.
No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.
To different minds, poetry may present different phases. To me, the reverent faith of the people I lived among, and their faithful everyday living, was poetry; blossoms and trees and blue shies were poetry. God himself was poetry.
One night, I lay awake for hours, just terrified. When the dawn finally came up - the comfortable blue sky, the familiar world returning - I could think of no other way to express my relief than through poetry. I made a decision there and then that it was what I wanted to do. Every time I pulled a wishbone, it was what I asked for.
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.
There's a certain line between jokes and music and poetry that's a bit blurred in my mind.
