Whenever I visit my family in Canada, I remind myself that what many Americans would consider forthright, many Canadians would consider overbearing.

It's not realistic to imagine that any poem will last forever. Our species won't last forever! We try to capture and preserve our impressions of reality because it's all going away: everything we think and remember, everything we've ever felt, everyone we love.

William Shakespeare tried hard to see every facet of every question, probably because he was more interested in questions than in answers. That's a big part of what makes him great, in my opinion.

I don't think I did write any poems to fill narrative gaps. Not consciously, anyway. As much as possible, I try to discover my poems' subject matter through the act of writing, instead of deciding ahead of time what my poems will be about.

When I started reciting my own poems in public, I worried that it would seem too theatrical, but now I find recitation very natural, because it allows me to address audiences directly.

I want to reiterate that my understanding of the poem is not the poem's core, true meaning. Once a poem goes out into the world, the poet is just one more reader.

Our analytical faculties allow us to look critically at our writing and interpret it. Sometimes we make bold, impulsive edits to our poems, but most forms of precision and economy in poetry, it seems to me, are signatures of the analytical mind.