In fact, sometimes traveling the world is a way of not writing a poem, but it's the quality of experience. It's being able to experience something and when you begin to write about it be able to apply the tools that you need for writing.

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

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

I always loved science. And in fact, I got a science award in high school. I mean, I loved science, but I think I loved literature more.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.