As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to be heterosexual.

I came to realize this weird projection: you are much more passionate about hating something outside of you when you know that something is also in you.

I really felt neurotic - it was a neurotic reason - but I had to teach very, very well. That sucked up a lot of oxygen from my time and my creative thinking.

Crows appear in many of my new unpublished poems. In these walks, they take on a symbolic life apart from their irritating, undeniable, interruptive presence. I figure them differently.

I'm not sure why my muse is female, except when I am deliberately playing against that figure.

The one difference I have noted is that it's made me more tender to my students and to young people particularly. It's made me mellower. I began to have a different perspective, because I may not be around much longer to be hassled by life's pressures.

I have some weak poems in that new collection, which is why I'm not ready to send the collection out yet.