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.

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

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.

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

I write to invite the voices in, to watch the angel wrestle, to feel the devil gather on its haunches and rise. I write to hear myself breathing. I write to be doing something while I wait to be called to my appointment with death. I write to be done writing. I write because writing is fun.

We're all writing out of a wound, and that's where our song comes from. The wound is singing. We're singing back to those who've been wounded.

Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won’t.