Social media is alluring, tempting, frustrating, etc. We mistake our interactions in social media as community, but is community possible when you don't even know what someone looks like or what his or her voice sounds like? I've enjoyed connecting with a lot of poets through social media, but do I truly know them if I haven't even met them yet?

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.

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.

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 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.

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.