If it's a drop of dew, it will dissolve.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.