I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.