The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.

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.

When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.

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

Did you love well what you very soon left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache.

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

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