The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

I would say my theme has always been paradise lost, always the lost cause, the lost leader, the lost utopia.

I've been willing to go for years without publishing. That's been my career.

Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.

Dreiser... I love... and almost wouldn't speak to anyone who ever attacked him.

I'm as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am, more so, than by Eliot. Actually, I'm much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons.