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.

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

I started listening to music when I wrote when I had three sons at home.

I still believe in this country, that it can fulfill the destiny Blake and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry.

But most commonly, it's one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity.

My father died when I was five, but I grew up in a strong family.