American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.

I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.

I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them.