Publishing the lyric books, poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That's the thing I really want to break into!

I have written about some truly great writers - John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, and William Faulkner. Faulkner and Frost were the very peaks of American poetry and fiction in the 20th century.

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.

Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

You have an absolute right to translate poetry in any form with any sound. It's all up for grabs.

The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the material for modern poetry.

Poetry, for me, is the answer to, 'How does one stay sane when private lives are being ransacked by public events?' It's something that hangs over your head all the time.

The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief.

Poetry is - it's an art form, but, to me, it's also a weapon, it's also an instrument. It's the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that's a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.

So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

Written poetry is different. Best thing is to see it in performance first, then read it. Performance is more provocative.

I am for poetry that is admired by peasant and aristocrat alike.

Science is for those who learn, poetry is for those who know.

I write all the time - I write poetry, I love to write.

I love poetry. I love rhyming. Do you know, there are poets who don't rhyme? Shakespeare did not rhyme most of the time, and that's why I do not like him.

I know nothing new except that Herr Gellert, the Leipzig poet, is dead, and has written no more poetry since his death.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

Poetry is this gorgeous, complex history rendered in verse and song, a blueprint that can lead you back into the world after you've walked into air.

When I was 18, I took a trip to Thailand with a friend. We stayed for a month. Bangkok was very raw for a teenager: there were no cellphones, no Internet, and the only music I had with me was this cassette by Liz Phair. I was writing a lot of poetry, and she embodied a talky style of songwriting that I found very accessible.