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.

You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible.

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.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

Poetry of all the forms of literature I think is the most suited for the digital age and for the shorter attention spans and all of that. It Twitters very easily, some lyric poems and it's very easy to zip a poem to someone, so that's one of the things I think is wonderful about poetry in the digital age.

We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry.poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.

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