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.

Anyone can tell you that how you're raised as a child has a great deal to do with how you behave as an adult and whether you have complexes or whether you need to prove yourself or all that kind of stuff and yet the mother in a traditional family who has raised a child never makes it in the history books.

I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.

I thought, after the Pulitzer, at least nothing will surprise me quite that much in my life. And another one happened. It was quite amazing.

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

I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.