From the beginning I felt that I didn't ever want to leave the impression that the process of writing a poem is totally mysterious. I couldn't explain everything that went on in the creation of a poem, but I could try to explain as much as I knew. I thought readers deserved that. I didn't want to set myself apart as being someone special.

I see my poems as interlinked. No poem gives an answer. It may offer other questions, it may instigate other questions that then become poems.

Poetry is so close to music, not just in cadence and sound but in silences. That's why, to me, I can't talk about prose poems. I can talk about poetic prose.

I love the language. I'm just totally fascinated by the sound and the look of words and the kinds of cadences you can create with them, the various kinds of music.

I approach writing a poem in a much different state than when I am writing prose. It's almost as if I were working in a different language when I'm writing poetry. The words - what they are and what they can become - the possibilities of the words are vastly expanded for me when I'm writing a poem.

Poetry uses language to create a music borne inside human experiences and emotions.

I'm primarily a poet, so I'd have to say in my case I'd investigate the mystery in poetry in a different way than prose might investigate it, in a way that includes the power of the music of language and maybe more imaginatively in poetry, but I don't really know about better or worse. I guess it depends on the writer.