The students always, always surprise me.

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.

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.

Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.

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.

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

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