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 can't move my body slowly. I can't move the line slowly. So I end up with way too much, often opaque to me later.

Looking out a window from different vantage points changes what you see and therefore what you write.

A number of poems don't work alone. They need to fit together to work.

Everyone had always told me I had to see alpine flowers, since I was writing about flowers, and I had never seen these. So I happened to be teaching a class at the University of Colorado, and I got to go for hikes that took me there. But my perspective was most often down at ground level, trying to see quite tiny exquisite flowers.

I try to attach myself to things around me so that they don't slip away.

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.