Poetry for me is as much a spiritual practice as sexual ecstasy is.

Elaine Equi has been publishing her observant, often playful poetry for some 30 years, extending and deepening the range of her intrinsically wry voice.

Poetry from the bottom up is an act of selection: you kind of feel your way through the crowds of poems. The good ones came forward a long time ago, and the bad ones fell away.

The quietest poetry can be an explosion of joy.

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer.

The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect piece of poetry. I always feel at peace and moved when I recite it.

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

It just happens to be that people like to associate poetry and rap music. I think that idea is kind of corny.

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.

Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say.

I published only in academic journals in philosophy until I was in my 40s, but I had been writing fiction and poetry my whole adult life - without ever once trying to publish it, and rarely letting anyone read it.

Every afternoon, I shut the door of my bedroom to write: Poetry was secret, dangerous, wicked and delicious.

Poetry taught me a great deal about language and images, but when it came to plotting, I was stumped. It's been very much a learn-by-doing thing for me.

I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.

I really liked 'Blk Girl Art.' It's like a manifesto saying why I create, whether it's poetry or music.

It's more fun to have a name rather than a number. I think this gives our products a personality. I get the names from literature, movies, opera, traveling, nature, poetry, sometimes even the street. I keep a small book that I write in. I wake up in the middle of the night and jot down a name for a lipstick or an eyeshadow.

My wife has been my greatest earthly inspiration. She excels in eloquence, the poetry of words, empathy and graciousness.

But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.