“For a lot of people, well-meaning teaching has made poetry seem arcane...” — Robert Pinsky Quote

“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.”

“All questions of process require an answer that begins with a very important sentence, and the sentence is: 'Everybody is different.' Whatever way of working you name - methodical, haphazard, gets up early in the morning, sleeps all day, works at night, revises immensely, never revises at all - someone has made great work with that way.”

“my dear, I have nothing to say.”

“In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.”

“A reader takes poetry deep within him or her by accommodating it within his/her range of consciousness.”