I'm always doing poems from a place of not-knowing, a place of ignorance in a way.

I'm really interested in culture because it is such a powerful human force, particularly in America where we think it's all about the individual.

I do think that the long poem speaks for an inner need for continuity. We live in a time of so many losses, disruptions, and distractions, that the need for a sense of the ongoing is quite real. The long poem is very satisfying in offering the psyche a model of coherence.

I think I started writing as a young person because I felt a lot of psychic confusion and emotional confusion, and writing was a way to sort it out. You know, to externalize it, sort it out, put it down, look at it, and hopefully it would become clearer.

Life seems complicated to me; I feel confused a lot of the time by life. I feel confused about the fact that we can be so tender as creatures to one another, and so monstrous at the same time.

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

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.