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

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

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 like to move around in the landscape between poetry and prose, between the lyrical and the narrative.

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

I tend to overuse the word "project" only because "book" is terrifying while I'm still in the middle of something. A project can fail. I don't want a book to fail.

Publishers have in-house editors, but I hire my own before I submit the work to publishers. They appreciate it and I feel more confident about the material.