I love poetry, but I find it so difficult to write well.

Nonfiction ties your hands a bit, and just like writing poetry in rhyme, it can force you to make more brutal decisions in terms of word choice, plot, etc.

I do believe that great love brings with it the terror and possibility of great loss.

I write one poem a year, usually in January or February.

Think of how much we stress about living up to our "potential," and how it creates anxiety and terror in people; in short, stops them from living their life as fully as they might out of fear and self-loathing.

Although I don't think love is quantitatively measured - in other words, I don't believe that you "don't know love until you have a child," that whole thing - I do believe it is qualitatively different.

I have been, earlier in my life, a lazy writer. I'd spend three hours at the gym to avoid writing, or I'd just find other distractions - reading, doing laundry, talking on the phone, etc. But suddenly I was like a laser beam: I was relentlessly focused, sometimes to the detriment of other things.