We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.

Moon In the Window I wish I could say I was the kind of child who watched the moon from her window, would turn toward it and wonder. I never wondered. I read. Dark signs that crawled toward the edge of the page. It took me years to grow a heart from paper and glue. All I had was a flashlight, bright as the moon, a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.

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

We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.

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

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.

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.