So I did quit coffee and I did quit smoking. But I haven't managed that with drinking!

I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.

I think this is true for all artists. My senses are very important to me.

Seeing yourself as responsible for the quality of your relationship, as a prime mover in your life, I think is a bold, amazing step.

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.

I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me, I did not leave him, he did not leave me, I freed him, he freed me.

The decision for me was whether to have 'The Father' be a book that told a story - from the point of view of this speaker, the daughter - without, as in the earlier books, then having a section on something else and a section on something else.