I think the grotesque can inspire intimacy (it draws us in) as well as awe, like the cabinets of curiosities.

My obsessions tend to cluster, so I often have families of poems in which only a couple of them make it to the book. It can be satisfying to banish poems to my "crappy poems" file.

I like to work with multiple sections because they lend themselves to the structure of the poem: its intensifications and arcs and closures. I feel like working with smaller units feels more natural to the way I write poems.

Many of the poems weave autobiographical elements with fabular or mythic materials.

I'm a compulsive enjamber. I'm drawn to half-meanings created by the line, so that's definitely an element of craft that's always on my mind. And I'm a big devotee of the short line, of couplets and tercets, and of irregular stanzas with lots of white space. I've got to give the dense language room to breathe!

I'm very interested in the materiality of language. I wonder if, perhaps, this comes from my background in the visual arts. I was a potter for a number of years and earned a BFA in art before going to graduate school for creative writing.

I tend to employ braided narrative threads in the lyric, so often echoes (of phrases or images) will occur and will hit my ear so I can shape different resonances and shifts in tone.