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

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.

Back then, I couldn't have left a poem a year and gone back to it.

I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.

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

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

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home.