Poetry is a vocal art for me - but not necessarily a performative one. It might be reading to oneself or recalling some lines by memory.

I think art is not an ornament or refinement at the fringes of human intelligence, I think it's at the center. It's at the core.

I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody.

For an American, there's no automatic place where people love the art of poetry. There's not a social class that considers poetry its property the way in some countries there's a snob value to the art.

For a lot of people, well-meaning teaching has made poetry seem arcane, difficult, a kind of brown-knotting medicine that might be good for you but doesn't taste so good. So I tried to make a collection of poetry that would be fun. And that would bring out poetry as an art, rather than the challenge to say smart things.

The medium of poetry is a human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is just as physical or bodily an art as dancing.

Art will not solve your problems. It will not enable you to live merrily.