What has stayed true in my life as a writer is my dedication to writing - I try to write every day, no matter what - and the joy that writing has given me.

What has stayed true in my life as a writer is my dedication to writing - I try to write every day, no matter what - and the joy that writing has given me.

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event.

My advice to my younger self would have been, "Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out."

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it.

I know writers for whom the act of writing is a necessary chore. They suffer to write great work. I am very lucky that for me writing is a delight.

I have no idea, actually, where I fit in, in terms of poetry camps. At AWP conferences, I have been on panels about humor, collaboration, visual poetry, confessional poetry, gender, and the body, as well as tributes to Edward Field and Albert Goldbarth. I felt at home on all of them - most poets straddle more than one school.