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

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

Keep growing. Stay awake. Beware of gurus. Keep a low overhead.

It takes courage to get clear about what your vision of the work is and to be persistent about it and pursue it, whatever you're saying. I'm still in a long learning process.

From the beginning. I was a poem-writing child. I wrote little novels in my composition book when I was eight, nine years old.

People want poetry and need it - we need what's not honored by the corporate mentality that has taken over. It gives people a language for responding to the violence, the shallowness, the near-nothings, the toys we're all supposed to want. It's a way for people to be able to connect with themselves.