It would be good for us Africans to accept ourselves as we are and recapture some of the positive aspects of our culture.

There has been a shift to what may be defined as a culture of negativity which goes well beyond coverage of politics.

Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics it's usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar.

I like to see myself as a bridge builder that is me building bridges between people between races between cultures between politics trying to find common ground.

We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing economics politics - trying to play a serious part in the world - to a culture that's really entertainment-based.

Literature is a state of culture poetry is a state of grace before and after culture.

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.

The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising by computer games and Internet visuals by film and MTV by the fashion shoot.

And yet in a culture like ours which is given to material comforts and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification it is surprising that so much poetry is written.

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies but it's clear that in America poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.

High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art and American poetry is not excluded from this.

While also importantly not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone but everyone should have the choice.

The Bible should be taught but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction myth poetry anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.

Bob Marley performed the 'One Love Peace' concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There's always been that in black music and culture in general. It's no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what's going on in black life. It's not unusual for hip-hop.

Piety is not a goal but a means to attain through the purest peace of mind the highest culture.

For me Twitter works best as a way of taking pictures of being stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. If people really want to read really funny quips about life parenting and pop culture then by all means read Michael Ian Black's tweets.

I plead for conservation of human culture which is much more fragile than nature herself. We needn't destroy other cultures with the force of our own.

Your basic person wants to talk about material culture internet culture. I think about God cats nature.

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade a musical idea no matter how innovative is threatened.

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

Music is always a reflection of what's going on in the hearts and minds of the culture.

This was a time frame when dance music and clubs were having a real impact on culture and it had an impact on me.

The spiral in a snail's shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way galaxy and it's also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA. It's the same ratio that you'll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world.

But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity and that being able to join in musical activity along with dancing could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture.