It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls, because I think those are the two elements of poetry.

If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.

When I was young, I was older than I am today.

We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.