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

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

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

You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn't expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, 'That is truly what I felt.' That is truly what I saw.

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.

I say, Father, the years have brought me here, still your son, they have brought me to a life I cannot understand.

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.