I am a result of what has happened on this planet - how could I find the art to say that? I can't, and yet, I am drawn to it because of the enormity of it. That seems really important.

I like the dance between sustained focus and digression that the long poem invites. A controlling metaphor helps to sustain the long poem.

We're nature. Our minds are nature. Our desire to make poetry is nature.

I like to joke that I started writing long poems out the anxiety over ending and starting poems. It just seemed easier to keep going.

I do think environmental writers need to be forward thinking, not just lamenting our losses. We do need to lament; in some ways it's important to be the vessels for grief for all that's being lost on our planet. But we also need to be forward thinking.

I think you have to live inside your contradictions and find a way to accept that that's the human condition - to be forced to live in contradiction.

Poetry is one of the most full ways of discovering what it feels like to be a human being in this particular moment, in this particular set of concerns. It's all about discovery.