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

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.

I like poetry because poetry - even in free verse - is formal, and it has to be very concise and packed and rich, and I like the feeling of having to do that, having to make the language tight and still free, as if the deepest freedom is created by the restrictions.

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've spent much of my life being attuned to watching for an image or a phrase that can trigger what might be a poem - could become a poem.

To my mind, most prose poems are more prose than poetry. They don't possess most of the qualities of a poem.

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.