The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.
My father died when I was five, but I grew up in a strong family.
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.
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.
I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.
There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.