You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.
Poetry at its best can do you a lot of harm.
Poems seem to have a life of their own. They tell you when enough is enough.
If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.
I have not the slightest pretension to call my verses poetry; I write now and then for no other purpose than to relieve depression or to improve my English.
There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.
My poems are always about my life in one way or another.
I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.
I'd say people do need some help with poetry because I think poetry just helps takes us to places that Americans aren't always accustomed to going.