I think I'd rather have my heart broke than do the breaking. —Lena

There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.

I love slow readers. And readers who think about what I've written, think about how it's written - and copy me!

I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

As a poet who has the tools for interpreting the poem differently, you can begin to deconstruct it. But the human being who's like, "I know about conversation, I know about language, I know about hard times," will approach the poem differently.

I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.

I think I had gotten messages really young that poetry wasn't for me, that it was for, basically, some dead white men. My experience and my intellect was on the outside of understanding that. I think that's what's so destructive.