I write to get myself writing. That and read Wallace Stevens' "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" for the umpteenth time. Certain authors for me, certain books, just by reading a phrase I feel I can write.

I treat myself as one of the sources. And, again, I think that’s accurate. One of the poets I read most frequently is myself. I really do. I read my own poems obsessively.

The issue is that when you're a critic it's hard to tell the difference between the thrill of denouncing and telling the truth. Telling the truth to me feels more often like denouncing than like praising. There are many more concrete advantages in the world for people who praise than for those who denounce. So if you want to tell the truth, oftentimes you're going to err on the side of denouncing. That's just something I have to work on.

I feel most myself when I'm reading, but by that I don't mean that I'm most comfortable when I'm reading. I feel most fully a person who's torn between attention and inattention, between loving and hating, between hyper-responsiveness and total dullness. Reading is not a comfortable experience for me.

I was never trying to be funny. Being funny feels to me like an alternate form of confessionality - that is, a way of dismantling the distance between writer and reader, a way of saying, "come in a little closer."

I do care about the consequences of being negative toward people who are powerful. But I'm more afraid of not being taken seriously as a critic - by editors, by readers.

The main thing in poetry criticism is that I have all these opinions, and I love having something to do with them. And I think it's important that people try not to be false. The ideal would be that everybody says everything in print. I don't know that it's that I'm not afraid.