In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

Dance, vaudeville, drama, movies - as a child I loved everything that went on in a theater.

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

Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema.

Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.