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 have thought for many years that the audience any creative writer imagines has a great effect on what gets written.

I think the language of science is highly lyrical and evocative and an important part of our lives in many ways.

I don't write or think too much about the word "salvation." I might; I probably should. We are such needy creatures, needing to be saved, to feel we are saved or might be, however we define ourselves, however we define that word.

The poem is a process, a way for me to discover questions, to ask them clearly or to discover the results of certain suppositions. Suppositions are a form of questioning.

As far as I can tell, writing the essays didn't change the way I wrote poetry. Although the essays contain scattered passages that might be called lyrical, they often contain closed statements of what is only suggested in the poetry.

We're all vulnerable in our various ways, and what we are physically, our bodies, is what has developed with the goal of keeping that life safe and intact, at least until we have procreated. That's what our bodies are, the protection of life.