There's something immediate about the experience of reading a poem. It makes sense in my own mind, but I'm trying to figure out a way to articulate it... It's like looking at a painting: you're able to take in the totality of the work all at once, and so processing whatever information that painting is giving you is almost secondary to simply apprehending what's in front of you.

It reminded me of talking, how what is said is never quite what was thought, and what is heard is never quite what was said. It wasn’t much in the way of comfort, but everything has a little failure in it, and we still make do somehow.

I can't envision an honest war novel that left war in a positive light.

It's not just: you get off the plane, you're back home, everything's fine. Maybe the physical danger ends, but soldiers are still deeply at risk of being injured in a different way.

There are definitely connections between poems, but I wanted each to stand on its own. I guess it goes back to the idea of trying to zoom in and out, and to modulate, so there are different ways of looking at any experience for the reader. Even having short poems and long poems - there has to be some kind of variation in the experience of reading as a whole.

I know that the writers I read and admire all have an influence on my work, but trying to determine to what degree any particular piece of input changes the way I think about writing seems counterproductive.

There is a sharp distinction between what is remembered, what is told and what is true.