Because I wake up late, my day is often short. I'm much more active in the evenings, during which I alternately read, write, needle-point, smoke, email, and despair over my decision last June to put my television and DVD player out on the street because I wasn't getting enough work done.

Because I wake up late, my day is often short. I'm much more active in the evenings, during which I alternately read, write, needle-point, smoke, email, and despair over my decision last June to put my television and DVD player out on the street because I wasn't getting enough work done.

One of the reasons poetry is such an amazing genre to work with is because it constantly reinvents itself and re-negotiates its terms with the reader.

Confessional poetry is, to my mind, more slippery than poems that are sloppily autobiographical; I find the confessional mode much more akin to dramatic monologue.

I prefer poems that occupy an imaginative sphere. When I lived in Cincinnati, I was occasionally referred to as an "Ohio Poet;" this made me uneasy, not only because I think of myself as a generally American poet but also because I like to think I write out of the country of my own mind.

When asked what I'd be if I weren't a writer, I'm tempted to respond with one of father's favorite phrases, one I despised while growing up: "I hate 'what-ifs.'"

There IS a difference between poetry and prose! Poems should be sonically charged and new to the ear.