When we're writing anything, we're bearing witness to the time we live in and how it's different from any other time in history.

What keeps me level is the refusal to let the best of human aspirations die in the face of the challenges. I make a moral decision to be hopeful.

I had wanted for so many years to feel that writing really was at the center of my life, not something I did in my spare time. So the writing and teaching feel in some way to be one thing - the personal engagement and the social engagement good partners.

I'm interested in thinking about how are we contributing to the culture, what we can write that might help us deepen the culture, make us more reflective, make us more empathetic, make us feel our connectedness in other ways.

When we're writing anything, we're bearing witness to the time we live in and how it's different from any other time in history.

For me teaching has provided community and livelihood and the satisfaction of passing along what I've learned to others.

I like to use research to enlarge the poem. And sometimes a rhetorical or syntactical gesture stitches the poem along.