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.

The more that accrues, the more depth, weight, and breadth we can bring to the poems, which we then need to throw overboard so we don't sink.

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.

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.

If trees could speak they wouldn't

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.

Writing and reading are the only ways to find your voice. It won't magically burst forth in your poems the next time you sit down to write, or the next; but little by little, as you become aware of more choices and begin to make them -- consciously and unconsciously -- your style will develop.