Spanish and English have such different music, and in my own poetry I feel much less drawn to fluid sounds than I do toward the hard sounds and rhythms that come out of the Anglo-Saxon roots of English.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.