The writing of a poem is, for me, in the first place, an almost total act of abandon leading to discovery leading to recognition.

Much of our lives involves the word “no.” In school we are mostly told, “Don't do it this way. Do it that way.” But art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing.

I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.

Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.

Sometimes the best revision of a poem is a new poem.

I speak to you in one tongue/ but every moment that ever mattered to me/ occurred in another language.

A nation's art is the expression of its soul.