I Like Connecting The Abstract To The

Poetry Is A Kind Of Distilled Insinuation. It's A Way Of Expanding And Talking Around An Idea Or A Question. Sometimes, More Actually Gets Said Through Such A Technique Than A Full Frontal Assault.

I See Many Black Males Grasping For Some Thread Of Hope. There Are So Many Destructive Practices, Glimpses Into A Psychic Abyss. That Must Be Very Frightening.

Poetry Helps Me Understand Who I Am. It Helps Me Understand The World Around Me. But Above All, What Poetry Has Taught Me Is The Fact That I Need To Embrace Mystery In Order To Be Completely Human.

I Define Poetry As Celebration And Confrontation. When We Witness Something, Are We Responsible For What We Witness? That's An On-going Existential Question. Perhaps We Are And Perhaps There's A Kind Of Daring, A Kind Of Necessary Energetic Questioning. Because Often I Say It's Not What We Know, It's What We Can Risk Discovering.

It Took Me 14 Years To Write Poems About Vietnam. I Had Never Thought About Writing About It, And In A Way I Had Been Systematically Writing Around It.