There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

I didn't have time to sit down and look at the work of a year and choose what to type.

I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.

Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

Everyone is so different. I sometimes wish I wrote in a different way. You know, that feeling of: So-and-so writes slowly, if only I wrote slowly.

Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.