If trees could speak they wouldn't

I don't know if we ever have enough distance to "see" our own trajectory. We're in the muddled middle of it. Who knows what will last, what poems will take hold of the imaginations of the future.

I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that's something someone else has to call you. It's like bragging.

And I saw it didn't matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty of the Iranian attendant, the thickening clouds--nothing was mine. And I understood finally, after a semester of philosophy, a thousand books of poetry, after death and childbirth and the startled cries of men who called out my name as they entered me, I finally believed I was alone, felt it in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo like a thin bell.

I would say my life experiences are my poetry, whether I'm writing about those actual, factual experiences or not.

A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.

You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.