W.S Merwin says "after three days of rain" and I write "After Twelve Days of Rain." I like his quietude. I admire his ability to be simple without being simplistic.

When you have worked with people all day who have so little and struggle to make it stretch, who live outside the rarefied, you are humbled.

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.

Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you--whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others--not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art.

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

We with my husband [Joseph Millar] are often the first reader for one another's work, and we often also have the last word. We trust each other. We have our past working life in common, our recombined families, as well as our life as teachers, and we read much of the same literature and have similar esthetics, so there's a simpatico there. But we do disagree and that can be fruitful, even if it's not so great in the moment.

You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.