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'm not the only person in the world who is suffering. I'm trying to talk to the world, responding to those voices.

We with my husband [Joseph Millar] are often the first reader for one another's work, and we often also have the last word. We trust each other. We have our past working life in common, our recombined families, as well as our life as teachers, and we read much of the same literature and have similar esthetics, so there's a simpatico there. But we do disagree and that can be fruitful, even if it's not so great in the moment.

The students always, always surprise me.

You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.

I feel deep gratitude for the life poetry has allowed me to live. I know the life I could have lived without it. Both on the physical plain, and the soul plain. Poetry helps us endure.

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.