Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to me.

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'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.

Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to me.

I'm always somehow drawn to that sense of how fragile things are and how a garden means so differently depending upon whose language you happen to be in or whose century you happen to be in.

I think about the kinds of gardens that Queen Elizabeth put up. She made gardens in the shape of an "E," for Elizabeth, just one more way in which she used symbolism to solidify her reign: appearing as the Virgin Queen, for example, or wearing a dress embroidered with eyes and ears to indicate that she knew all that was going on in her castle; she had spies.

One of the reasons I like immersing myself in different texts, putting myself in the company of other writers, is that they do change your vocabulary. They change what you write about or they change the length of lines.