Young poets worry that their experiences - whether urban or rural, immigrant or native, small town, suburb, or big city - aren't worthy of the written word. But for me the urge toward poetry, that seductive feeling of being swept away by words, was enough for me to overcome that fear that my experiences weren't worthy of poetry itself.

I write to be recorder, observer, participant, and sometimes, even judge. I want to engage the world as I see it with my whole self - all of those different aspects of it.

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

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

I switch between fixed forms and free verse often, and enjoy being a poet who can "swing both ways," so to speak.

Part of elegy is confrontation - not just with the idea of death, but with the person who has died.

I need sometimes to hang back in the shadows with my pen and paper, and then other times, I need to take center stage in my own creations. The trick is to know when to hang back, and when to step forward. It's a perpetual ongoing balance.