I did not know the work of mourning Is a labor in the dark We carry inside ourselves

And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.

I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction to learn.

You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.

That is many poets don't know how to tell a story and they don't have a sense of how to put things in order to tell a story and we thought the poets could learn from fiction writers something about developing a character over time who wasn't just you and also creating a narrative structure.

I think one of the things that distinguished my work from the beginning when I was in college was my turning towards poetry from other countries.

Gertrude Stein said, "I write for myself and strangers." I would say I write for myself, strangers and the great dead.