I think that the people who really accomplish things in this world have to have a little bit of crazy in them.

When poets die, other poets take it personally, almost as an affront. A lot of us "left behind" are thinking that poetry is the one thing keeping us alive and present, so what does it mean when one of our ranks chooses to end his or her life? There's an anger beneath the grief, you know? That anger and grief, in turn, breeds other poems from those of us left behind.

I write a lot, and then forget what I've written, and then come back to it and say, "Not bad, I should do something with this!"

I lived a life I knew I had to hide My father's edicts resolutely grim.

I write when I can. I have no set writing practices, or times, or methods. I write when I'm not doing other things - in the odd times when I'm traveling, or in hotels, or when I get time to be alone with my thoughts.

It's fun to see someone grow as a writer, moving from their first workshopped poems to publishing their earliest poems to having a book accepted for publication. It's great to see poets with persistence succeed.

I'm educating myself more about world poetry. I know a lot about contemporary American poetry, so I felt I needed to learn more about figures like Borges, Akhmatova, Neruda, etc. I felt I needed a bigger lens to see poetry through. It really helps to see poetry as a world language, and not just something American.