I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?

I believe people may have a predisposition for artistic creativity. It doesn't mean they're going to make it.

It's the combination of the intimate and the public that I find so exciting about being poet laureate.

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

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry

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.

I think if you put something in a file that says "war poems" or "love poems" that you already restrict the way in which the poem might move.