For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about the lack of respect artists got here. In my heart, I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.

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.

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.

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

Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.

What's a word, a talisman, to hold against the world?

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