We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.

I certainly can't speak for all cultures or all societies, but it's clear that in America, poetry serves a very marginal purpose. It's not part of the cultural mainstream.

There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.

Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb.