I figure I write for people who are intelligent enough to do some labor. Lazy readers are not my ideal readers.

One of the things I'm constantly telling my students is that they're never going to write a poem everyone gets, or if they do, they've failed. They should leave someone behind every time.

I turned to human suffering because - this may sound odd - animal suffering is more difficult for me to deal with.

Revision is a good impulse to have.

Matt Mason must be declared the poet laureate of the Midwest! No other native son celebrates the overlooked America, its unsung citizens (from the anonymous poets to the part-time English teachers), and its expansive indigenous landscape, as well as he does. Mason's poetry is humorous when he wants to be quirky, heartbreaking when he wants to be eloquent, and though he moves effortlessly into other moods and geographies, he always returns to his first and most enduring love (and to what he knows best)-his homeland.

I always revise when I publish in a book. So versions in magazines are sometimes slightly different.

I enjoy working on a number of projects - books - at once.