I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that day.

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

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine.

Anyone can tell you that how you're raised as a child has a great deal to do with how you behave as an adult and whether you have complexes or whether you need to prove yourself or all that kind of stuff and yet the mother in a traditional family who has raised a child never makes it in the history books.

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.