I try to avoid calling myself a poet because I think that's something someone else has to call you. It's like bragging.

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

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.

If trees could speak they wouldn't

The changes that have occurred in poetry have been minor when you look at it over the scale of human time. It's like a rose, maybe a hybrid with color and size differentials, but the same genus, plucked from the same original blowsy family.

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.

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.