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.

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.'"

One cannot have "success" in poetry. If I wanted to be successful, I'd have become a lawyer.

To think of writing poetry as a "career" is not only ridiculous, it's dangerous. To the imagination. To the way one thinks of art. The reason poetry as a genre is so special is because it cannot be made a commodity.

I consider poetry my vocation, not my "career." My career is as a university professor; that's what pays the bills.

The fiction writer has a lot of balls to juggle. Setting, pacing, dialogue, and so on. And let's not forget: plot. That was always a hard one for me. And I always had this spastic tendency to wrap up a story before I'd seen it the whole way through, a sort of writer's pre-ejaculatory tendency: "The End!"

When fiction writers like my poems I feel like I've hit the jackpot.