Stories are the reproductive organs of language.

Drop a word in the ocean of meaning and concentric ripples form. To define a single word means to try to catch those ripples. No one’s hands are fast enough.

Popularity isn't just something that happens. You have to give something in exchange for it, and that's the dangerous part of the process.

How much money you get, depends on lots of extraneous things. It depends on how good you are at turning poetry into a marketable product, which is something it was never supposed to be. That's why many people suppose that the better the poet you are the lower your income should be, and that's probably true.

I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph.

Every Native North American text I've ever grappled with has taught me something important about how to live on the continent where I was born.

By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well.