You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.

You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.

I can't imagine how Afghanistan's fall isn't going to be ten times faster than Iraq's.

The most dangerous thing I've ever encountered was a run-in with Boko Haram around 2007 in a small town in Nigeria. I got caught along with the photographer I was working with, the same one I worked with on the Afghanistan book, Seamus Murphy. We were caught in an attack by a mob after Friday prayers. And the level of violence was so extreme. It was more violent than any other mob violence I have ever seen.

My upbringing was pretty interesting. It was a rigorous, intellectual upbringing, but with the idea that we were a part of an important and legitimate enterprise. What that meant was sitting around the dinner table from a really early age with people from all different backgrounds who believed in God. When I was reporting in the wake of September 11th in Iraq and elsewhere, I felt I had the capacity to talk to people whose beliefs might sound outlandish to more secular journalists. I felt like I could be a translator between those two worlds.

I think most good poetry is about suffering; I think that's what underlies the love in these landays pieces - suffering and longing.

The power of the voice in rap is about the expression of truth, rather than the expression of some kind of artifice. Landays, they're about love and pleasure and oppression and levels of oppression within a family. And because of that, I think rap music is probably closely related.