I'm always telling my students that the weirdest thing is the truth. I mean, the fact that we get up in the morning and put on clothes is weird.

Language can also be play and music and beauty and desire and grief and rage and truth without always having to be message-driven or purely functional. Moving away from "useful" doesn't mean it isn't necessary. You can still need poetry while also needing money or food or physical health.

Poems have always been a place for questions for me. Not answers. And I have a lot of questions these days. One of the reasons I've felt so connected to poetry throughout the years is because it's the only art form that has breath built into it. And I need that breath now. I need that breath so much. So, yes, it is a refuge for me. Absolutely.

I'm always talking about how the poems I am most obsessed with are like people: complex and unknowable and with a huge capacity for many different emotions.

I'm always telling my students that the weirdest thing is the truth. I mean, the fact that we get up in the morning and put on clothes is weird.

I mean, it's hard to talk about death without realizing that's our end too, right? I am constantly aware of death. It's not that I want to be, but it's a fascination of the mind and it plays a role in why I want to live my life a certain way. The more I am aware of my mortality the better person I am and the better I am at choosing a life that is aware of its beauty.

I have been writing. Even when I intend not to write, I find myself writing. I'm currently in a place where I should be putting together the fifth book, but then more poems are coming. It's exciting and somewhat daunting. You know how we are when a new book of poems is at last coming together - all frenzy, distraction, and bounty? It's as if I've turned into summer itself.