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.

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.

Even your own memory changes over time because of circumstances or even because your body changes.

I'm really interested in what you remember, how you remember, what your perspective is as opposed to somebody else's.

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

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

For me, failure has to be acknowledged, needs to be faced in some way.