I was attacked by two dogs when I was three and a half years old. I'm lucky to be alive. My face was stitched back together and here I still am, gratefully so. I believe that experience shocked me into a deep alliance with the animal world, its beauty and viciousness and terror.

Bringing science into poetry is one way of acknowledging some of the richest stuff that is in my cultural moment.

Once you realize that human actions affect every bit of earth and sky, you realize that the environment isn't just what surrounds us - it's all one whole.

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.

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

The environment is becoming so much a central concern, I see environmental concerns just bleeding into poetries all over the place. My hope is that we won't have these environmental poets tucked over here and everybody else doing cool stuff with language and consciousness elsewhere, but that all of it will become one thing.

Writers want recognition, audience, some corroboration that all those hours at the desk and in daydreams add up to something in the esteem of others.