To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years - or longer.

The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.

I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

Creative writing and literacy go hand and hand.

I didn't know writers could be real live people, because I never knew any writers.

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!