Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.

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.

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

What triggers a poem for me is not the same as what triggers an essay. My mind is geared now to looking for, or to watching out for, the image that attracts my attention or the phrase or the strange juxtaposition that strikes me bodily, or an odd question or supposition.

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.

The greatest tragedy that can befall a poet is to be praised by being misunderstood.

It sounds old-fashioned to say, but we have some kind of purpose for being here, not poets or writers, but all of us humans.