I try to write everyday. I do that much better over here than when I'm teaching. I always rewrite, usually fairly close-on which is to say first draft, then put it aside for 24 hours then more drafts.

I don't think it's by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.

Good writing gives energy, whatever it is about.

You are almost not free, if you are teaching a group of graduate students, to become friends with one of them. I don't mean anything erotically charged, just a friendship.

There is something very satisfactory about being in the middle of something.

Poetry dovetails contradictions.

Paris is a wonderful city. I can't say I belong to an especially anglophone community.