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

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.

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.

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

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.

I've just always loved animals. So I've often thought that if I weren't a writer I'd work for some nonprofit organization that does something positive for animals.

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.