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

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

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.

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

I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought too that if I could write about it I could come to understand it; I believed that if I could understand my life—or at least the part my work played in it—I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life.

How weightless/ words are when nothing will do.

Meet some people who care about poetry the way you do. You'll have that readership. Keep going until you know you're doing work that's worthy. And then see what happens. That's my advice.