Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.

It's unfortunate that sometimes in schools, there's this need to have things quantified and graded.

All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.

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

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.

Everybody who's anybody longs to be a tree.

My childhood library was small enough not to be intimidating. And yet I felt the whole world was contained in those two rooms. I could walk any aisle and smell wisdom.