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.

I am fascinated with criminal law because it is as rigorous as a poem and because it is based on what has been written down even before one has committed a crime.

I wanted many of the poems to have long legs. At first I was calling them clothespin poems, before I knew what I was doing. The lines seem pulled on either end, tight and taut against the wind.

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

Every thing is changing every minute.

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.

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