That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.

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.

A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.

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

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.

We all get habituated, right? You get up in the morning, have your coffee, and read your newspaper, and that’s great. Everybody loves life in its mundane, daily aspects. It’s what makes us feel secure. But I also start to go numb a little bit and I don’t see what’s around me. So I put myself in a new situation and suddenly I’m really seeing the person next to me, hearing music, and I’m smelling, and I can’t help but want to write it down.

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