One of the things I've always thought is that if I were to write a poetics, it would have to do with the poetics of failure, and the way in which all the things that you claim or that you try for are already based on the limits of language.

I think those of us who use language are always trying for this, trying to keep everything from floating away by trying to write about it despite failure.

Language is as fragile as the little alpine plant.

I want literature to open all the doors that I can't open by myself, and to allow me to see things that I wouldn't otherwise see.

Shakespeare, of course, makes us ever aware of transience, not only in the sonnets, but also powerfully in his plays - spectacles for a brief period of time and then gone, as when Prospero describes the pageant fading, leaving "not a rack behind."

I can't remember the past, or I can't see very clearly, or I've gotten older and the person I was isn't there anymore, and the place I grew up isn't where I live now.

I'm in California, so I know people who are natives who tell me there's lots of weather here, but it's not the same as being in Vermont. Since I grew up on the East Coast I miss that weather all the time. You'd think I'd get used to not having it, but I don't.