The ground swell is what’s going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are clichés also, of course, and I’m sometimes interested in how much one can get away with.

Living at that pitch, on that edge, is something which many poets engage in to some extent.

I live in New Jersey now, which always gets a bad rap here and there, but I must say, I enjoy living here too

That's one of the great things about poetry; one realises that one does one's little turn - that you're just part of the great crop, as it were.

I certainly am interested in accessibility, clarity, and immediacy.

One will never again look at a birch tree, after the Robert Frost poem, in exactly the same way.

The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.