The pleasure that I take in writing gets me interested in writing a poem. It's not a statement about what I think anybody else should be doing. For me, it's an interesting tension between interior and exterior.

Community means people spending time together here, and I don't think there's really that.

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.

You happened to me. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse.

I think there is something about coming to a city to work that puts you in touch with it in a different way.

I worked at all kinds of jobs, mostly commercial editing.

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.