My mother carried on and supported us; her ambition had been to write poetry and songs.

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

I'm afraid we live at the mercy of a power, maybe a God, without mercy. And yet we find it, as I have, from others.

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

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

I write what's given me to write.

I realized poetry's the thing that I can do 'cause I can stick at it and work with tremendous intensity.