I got interested in Zen when I was a teenage beatnik on the streets of San Francisco. And it was my interest in Zen, in part, that got me into the Marine Corps, because that was a ticket to Asia.… — Sam Hamill Copy Share Image
If only we could touch the things of this world at their center, if we could only hear tiny leaves of birch struggling toward… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
I'm basically a poetry scholar, and I'm happier here in my studio with my row of Chinese dictionaries than I am, frankly, at Lincoln… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
We poets don't tend to be certain a lot. Much of our art is made out of our own uncertainty. And there is a… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
Each of us as poets, as decent suffering human beings, has to find a way to run our lives that is compassionate toward one… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
Korea's first Zen Master-poet wrote simple yet elegant poetry of the world he inhabited, both physically and spiritually, and of daily insights-a pause along… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
There's a fragment that goes, "Some say the most beautiful thing in the world is a great cavalry riding down over the hill. Others… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
I think a lot of American poets are swimming-pool Soviets. A lot of them have taken the comfortable, self-protective route too often. I know… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
Nothing will change until we demolish the "we-they" mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal. — Sam Hamill Copy Share
I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me. — Sam Hamill Copy Share
Kenneth Rexroth took me under his wing for a brief period. I was fifteen years old, and I was smoking a lot of heroin… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
One of the things I love about translation is it obliterates the self. When I'm trying to figure out what Tu Fu has to… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
The oldest cliché in the world is about "what's lost in translation," but you don't very often read much intelligent about what's gained by… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
The only thing we all agree on, virtually every poet in this country, is that this Administration is really frightening, and we want something… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
George W. Bush is using language that's a mirror image of the language of Osama bin Laden when he says, "We have God on… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
I would say that my great political awakening was really born on Okinawa, reading Albert Camus: the "Neither Victims nor Executioners" essay and The… — Sam Hamill Copy Share
