I wanted to be a composer for a while, and for a while, and maybe still, I found writing music much easier than writing poetry. So maybe my brain clings to it.

I think about the body kind of all the time, being as how I'm really uncomfortable in mine.

I was just thinking about how my grandparents, who raised me, would be considered "white trash," whatever that means - mostly for being racists, I'd say. And how, as a child, I wanted to be like them, and identified with them culturally.

I'm always glad that other people are way smarter about my poems than I am.

I think that the moment we're living in offers the best opportunity we've had in a long time in that a lot of things having to do with identity politics are being talked about in poems. The only problem there is that a lot of the time these are being talked about in confessional modes.

I learned to write with my desk in the living room, next to the TV. But mostly in my head, and I try to be able to do it under any circumstances.

I just can't write and listen to music at the same time.