The art has to have a life of its own and not merely illustrate. I've always felt a great illustration can make a good poem even better. That's the advantage I have in illustrating my own work - I have the freedom to leap far from the poem.

I studied art at Queens College, taking very few courses in literature. But I've always loved reading poetry and grew up enjoying the so-called beat poets, Allan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso among them. The poems of Ogden Nash also inspired me, having first seen his work while browsing in a library when I was in the sixth grade.

When I was young I drew constantly in my sketchbooks to learn to see things. My first teacher in school, Gilbert Stone, taught me that you have to see things as they are first. Then you can distort, exaggerate, or re-create the world. I sketch in a small, unobtrusive sketchbook or on any paper at hand. I write on canary yellow tablets or any scrap available. I'm constantly doodling, even while editing my kids' homework, much to their chagrin!

Narrative nonfiction was not my forte. I always wanted to let my imagination run free, and the facts sometimes got in the way. At one point I wanted to illustrate Jack Prelutsky's enchanting poems. Unable to do that, I started devising and improvising my own poems, very raw at first. I immersed myself in verse, writing reams of stuff until it gelled.

With time some poems just fall by the wayside. Other poems get better over time with revision, revision, revision. My ladybug poem took 10 minutes to write but was 10 years in the making.

Left right left right. We're army ants. We swarm we fight. We have no home. We roam. We race. You're lucky if we miss your place.

The art has to have a life of its own and not merely illustrate. I've always felt a great illustration can make a good poem even better. That's the advantage I have in illustrating my own work - I have the freedom to leap far from the poem.