In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things

It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing

I never think of my audience when I write a poem. I try to write out of whatever is haunting me; in order for a poem to feel authentic, I have to feel I'm treading on very dangerous ground, which can mean that the resulting revelations may prove hurtful to other people. The time for thinking about that kind of guilt or any collective sense of responsibility, however, occurs much later in the creative process, after the poem is finished.

My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.

Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree.

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.

Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.