The cool thing about having a book is that it takes on its own life. Once it's in the world, you can't follow it. You'd have to have a pretty fantastic surveillance system to track its migration.

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.'"

Some poems take two to three years to finish. Rarely, a poem will arrive whole. It's nice when that happens. However, process has become so grueling for me over the past few years that when one of my students uses the word "inspiration" I practically shriek with laughter.

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.

I admire the poetic relationship to place as enacted in Wallace Stevens' poems; his poetics strikes me as an argument against the restraints of realism.

I encourage my students to be honest in their assessment of both the published work we read and the work of their classmates. I think there's always the occasion for discussing elements of craft, whether the student's poem is terrible or quite wonderful.

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