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

I'm trying to stay open to the idea that the Internet is not the evil foe of publishing but the handmaiden that will turn out to be a blessing for poets and writers.

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.

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

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

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

I think translation is an impossible job, and I admire the people who do it in a way that brings poetry to us that we wouldn't have access to.