For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion.

I write what's given me to write.

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.

The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

You have begun to separate the dark from the dark.