One of the most important differences I see between prose and poetry is the music of the language.

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.

I think my prose - mine and that of others - sometimes slips into a cadence or rhythm that can replicate or come close to the music in a wonderful poem, and then it returns to the sound of prose.

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.

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.

The silences express so much and are so crucial in music, and prose does not allow for the creation of these silences, these white spaces on the page or the computer screen.

I do love writing prose interspersed with the poetry of other people. Their rhythms break into my prose and create a connection.