My poetry is the most disappointing thing for me that I've ever written. When I say I can write everything, I don't say I can write everything well.

I'm an amalgam of the 19th-century romantics and the beat poets.

I've always used poetry to explain myself to myself. These things just sat in my psyche and then came out.

Comedy was something I picked up trying to perfect my art through spoken word. I got on YouTube just to show off my poetry, and then people thought I was funny, so I ran with it.

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.

Definitely, some of the artistry and poetry has been lost in modern chess. It's very rare that I play a game where I'm like, 'Wow, this is really interesting. There were so many possibilities! It was such a rich game.'

I love the fact that Inuit poetry may resonate with me as much as Irish.

I don't like to have a calm, orderly, quiet place to work. I often compose while driving, compose in my head. It is true that I wrote my little book, 'The Sounds of Poetry, A Brief Guide,' almost entirely in airplanes and airport departure lounges.

I have always made my own rules, in poetry as in life - though I have tried of late to cooperate more with my family. I do, however, believe that without order or pattern poetry is useless.

It's just poetry, beauty and love. How hard can that be to act?

Look at Allen Ginsberg. In poems like 'Kaddish' and 'Howl,' you can hear a cantor between the lines. It's fully alive, and I think that's what's missing in modern poetry. It's too dry and cerebral.

It's probably the first type of music we had, rhythm, whether it's poetry or tapping.

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.

When Auden said his poetry didn't save one Jew from the gas chamber, he'd said it all.

I did not start out thinking I'm going to become a feminist poet. It was a tag I was given.

Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, who founded Lenny Books together, also happen to have exquisite reading tastes - from obscure small press poetry chapbook to dishy memoirs to literary novels - and so it's a real honor that they've chosen to announce their imprint with my stories.

Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.

One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.

When I was young, I struggled with authorship: with everything the word meant and failed to mean. Irish poetry was heavy with custom. Sometimes at night, when I tried to write, a ghost hand seemed to hold mine. Where could my life, my language fit in?

I like to write, I like to reflect, and not just poetry, I like to write my thoughts down. I think it's good for people who are more introspective, and it helps me get a better understanding of myself.