I know that in some ways I operate from a kind of antiquated interest in imagery, while many contemporary poets are not so interested in imagery. I think part of it is my training, and just my visual sense of things.

The days start to be charged not because tomorrow you're leaving, but because in three weeks you're leaving. The future impinges. So you start to think about the frame.

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 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.

I know that in some ways I operate from a kind of antiquated interest in imagery, while many contemporary poets are not so interested in imagery. I think part of it is my training, and just my visual sense of things.

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 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.