I do have a tendency to invest inanimate objects with human qualities.

Poems can't help but be personal. Mine are certainly an accurate blueprint of the things I think about, if not a record of my daily life.

I'm interested in concrete poems - anything that complicates the line between the written and the visual.

I don't see much difference between prose poems and flash fiction (I've often taught the latter as the former), but then I also don't see that much difference between art and poetry.

Recently, while I was in England, I saw a documentary on the BBC about the border between India and Pakistan at Wagah. When the border closes each evening around six o' clock, the soldiers on each side do these amazing high-stepping peacock march-offs (like a dance-off). The displays are almost identical on each side and thousands gather to watch them. Though they're patrolling along their separate borders, what comes across is how similar they are.

We humans have an amazing way of making everything personal.

Some of my favorite poems are "confessional" poems written in the voices of aliens ("Southbound on the Freeway" by May Swenson" and "Report from the Surface" by Anthony McCann), sheep ("Snow Line" by John Berryman) or a yak ("The Only Yak in Batesville, Virginia" by Oni Buchanan).