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.

The reason I started writing was because I was a little kid in San Diego who was getting beaten up by her dad and sexually abused and because I felt different than everybody else and I had this big huge secret that was tearing me apart.

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing.

It's difficult to talk about [W.S.] Merwin's poems, as it's hard to talk about a feeling or a smell. It is what it is, but so much so that it overwhelms both sense and the senses. I aspire to something about his work, that imbues his poems, though I'm not sure I could say what that is. A purity, maybe, the kind of purity that comes from being beaten, like steel.

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.

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.

I also have my backpack of the tried-and-true, and because it is new to [my students], it becomes fresh to me again as well.