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.

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

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

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

If that voice that you created that is most alive in the poem isn't carried throughout the whole poem, then I destroy where it's not there, and I reconstruct it so that that voice is the dominant voice in the poem.

I'm seventy-one now, so it's hard to imagine a dramatic change.

I find you in these tears, few, useless and here at last. Don't come back.