One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.

When I think about what really matters, it's not looking at art that has made the most difference or has been most shaping of the poetry; it's simply living as completely in the world as a politically alert creature, as someone who is both stuck in and also trying to view the historical moment. Folded into all of that, of course, whatever you see in your life.

One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.

I've spent most of my life in cities, and so I've always lived with the curiosity about what makes for city cultures and how peoples live in cities, how peoples anywhere manage to co-exist, the public life and the private life.

When I came into consciousness as a writer when I was in my early 20s, I just assumed that a writer did - a poet writer did everything all at once. I would write poetry, and while writing poetry I would also write work in the world - if I could get into the world.

Every cliche is true, right? That's why they're cliches.

A lot of the stuff that I see, because it's part of the work that I do, is look at pictures and photographs and sculpture and all the rest of that. I also spend a lot of time looking at the people on my street, and all of it simply exists in sort of this tremendous forceful wash of reality out of which comes, what I hope, are these shapely recognitions of reality, which are my poems.