Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you've done something wrong but don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.

Poetry makes people nervous. Especially in schools.

Every moment I choose to write about is one I have deemed important enough to dwell inside of and share with others. I am holding this moment up to the light and saying, "Wow, will you look at that?"

Our day-to-day lives are pretty chaotic. So in terms of the writing part, you have to get pretty disciplined about finding quiet moments and making sure you're making time for the art side, on top of all the time-consuming business side.

I want [my daughter] to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind.

Poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me. I like to poem my way through tricky questions and ideas. That's about the only consistent thread through my poem-creation process.

Fingers interlocked like a beautiful accordion of flesh or a zipper of prayer