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My work should be seen as poetry.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.

It's ironic that while I was a worker in Detroit, which I left when I was twenty six, my sense was that the thing that's going to stop me from being a poet is the fact that I'm doing this crummy work.

It's absolutely crucial to maintain my life as a poet.

For better or worse, poetry is my life.

Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.

The commitment to working at poetry is important because a poet is a maker, and a poem is a made thing. We have to honor our feelings by working to transform them into something meaningful and lasting.

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

Poetry is what I've done my whole life. And every important thing in my life had found itself into poems.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.