We're all taking on too much, we're all asking too much of ourselves. We're all wishing we could do more, and therefore just doing more.

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

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.

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

Maybe in order to understand sex fully/one has to risk being destroyed by it.

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.

Well, 'The Wellspring' was written from 1983 to 1986. And it had a section in the beginning that was poems that began from others' experience.