I came to poetry because I felt I couldn't live properly in the real world.

I think the reason I've published so few books is that I have a pretty high expectation of self-reinvention between books and I would prefer to have been in this world and published fewer works than I would publishing the books that would reveal the process of the changes.

I find it odd that, in real life people think I am funny but no one ever suspects that on the page! Personally, I think some of my work is a riot! I crack myself up, but I know that the poems seem so relentlessly dark.

Poetry is the skin that I have between my body and the world's body.

Every thing is changing every minute.

At the heart of my life is the idea that I don't ever want anything to ever change. That's the basic tenet.

That's what interests me in poetry. That withholding, that white space, the pressure, and my long-term faith in violent concision, is still with me.