What writing does is to reveal.

My inspiration comes from everywhere, just walking down the street and I never know where it's going to come from, so I keep a notebook with me at all times and the only criteria for anything making it into that notebook is if it stops me in my tracks for even an instant, if it catches my eye or my ear and I just write it down.

I was apprehensive. I feared every time I talked about poetry, it would be filtered through the lens of race, sex, and age.

One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits.

If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.

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

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.