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.

I prefer always to think that I am creating a book, not a series of stand-alone poems.

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.

Gardens do offer a temporal tableau and certainly mean differently in different eras and indeed geographies (think of the formal gardens in France).

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 remember the past, or I can't see very clearly, or I've gotten older and the person I was isn't there anymore, and the place I grew up isn't where I live now.

You can get a sense of the wonderful power of framing by holding your fingers up in a kind of square, walking around the room and framing it differently - how that changes the nature of what you think the room is like.