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.

Joseph [Millar] is much more disciplined than I am. He's up every morning meditating, then he writes, and he reads throughout the day. He probably reads ten books to my two and writes twice as much as I do.

If you want to be a writer in the world you really have to sit down and say, 'Why do I want to do this and why was I drawn to it to begin with?' And keep reminding yourself to return to that original impulse.

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.

Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's.

There's no word for what Young does, only for what he accomplishes-the capturing of small, daily miracles.

I share my life experiences as a poet with my students. My poetic difficulties, joys, struggles and discoveries. If I read a new poem or essay or book I'm excited about, I bring it in.