I'm about to start something new. I'm waiting to be whelmed. The whelming as you start something new is quite something.

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry, they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But, after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies, I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

When a colleague of mine had a notable New York Times book, I said, turn one of the chapters in the collection into a pitch for a novel and sell it to your publisher.

The poem has to bear the weight with image, language... the screenplay with dialogue, plot.

The intricacy of plotting a thriller is akin to writing formal poetry.

Writing is my obsession, my passion. My relationship with it is one of the most complex and agonizing and richly vexing that I have in my life.

She let him go once. Every day demands that she release him over and over again.