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

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

Revision is a good impulse to have.

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.

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 pay editors. I never ask friends or colleagues to work for free.

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