Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about.

We sometimes received - and I would read - 200 manuscripts a week. Some of them were wonderful, some were terrible; most were mediocre. It was like the gifts of the good and bad fairies.

i'm alternatingly brilliant and witless-and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.

I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

There is a way in which all writing is connected. In a second language, for example, a workshop can liberate the students' use of the vocabulary they're acquiring.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.