Each poem seems to demand its own formal approach. In both drafting and revision, I'll play around with line lengths and stanza formations, eventually letting the poem settle into what I think is its own best form.

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.

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

Each poem seems to demand its own formal approach. In both drafting and revision, I'll play around with line lengths and stanza formations, eventually letting the poem settle into what I think is its own best form.

Only after my father's death could I speak my own individual truths about him. In a sense, I had to turn him into a character, a figure I could control through language.

I find it hard to write poems in reaction to world/national events unless there's a way in that's so evident to me that I can't deny the urge to write about such events. It takes me a while to gather the evidence, you know?