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.

I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

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.

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.

The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.

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.

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