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.

I came to teaching late - not until my forties - which is one reason why I'm not burned out.

Teachers have had a great effect on me as a child. I've always loved school and had a great appetite for learning. I cried when it was time to go back home and tried to jump from my mother's moving car to run back there.

I'm always writing towards a discovery. When I'm writing poems in particular, I'm often writing because a few images coalesced in my mind and I thought, "I wonder why these images are abrading against each other. I wonder what happens if put them in a poem and explore them." I'm trying to learn something every time I write a poem.

I'm always trying to bring as many poetic properties as possible to the essay without making it too overburdened.

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

I'm just really interested in the interface of the individual with the collective. I think that's where the arts live.