Teaching has given me a community that cares about poetry, and I'm grateful for that.

My books have come many years apart and each one seems to reflect a period of experience. Ending the book is like putting a period on a certain movement. Interior and external - both.

Whether the poet is living or dead, they're part of our imaginative community.

Teaching has given me a community that cares about poetry, and I'm grateful for that.

I'm much more capable of cutting back than of expanding. I've gotten very surgical about poems.

After I started publishing poetry I got to teach creative writing. Eventually I was promoted and even got tenure. But then I felt compelled to drop everything and move. But I've been teaching for a long time. More than four decades.

I love stories, but writing fiction is another craft and I don't feel as if I have it.