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

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

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

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

I do bring my teaching together with my writing. I make students write in class, and do the same prompts I give them. I'm always on the lookout for teaching poems - poems that inspire me and my students to write poems in response.

I like when a poem ends on its "receipts," meaning it gives me something tactile or tangible to dwell on as I exit the reading experience. So I strive to end my own poems that way as well.

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.