Quite a while ago, I made a conscious choice to place my teaching first, so it was very ego-invested. That decision wasn't a good thing in some ways.

Writing a poem is unwriting a knot, like untying a shoelace that is clubbing your foot.

You need to be distracted.

I want, I want, I want! We never grow out of it somehow. Unless we become Buddhists, maybe.

This condition [irony] has nothing to do with writer's block, a psychological syndrome, which is one of the few I have not diagnosed for myself!

I don't like crows. In the poem "C," crows are predatory, killing other birds and so forth. But in my morning walks, there were always crows, particularly at certain times of the year. And they're very aggressive, very visible and loud. They're not at all likable, but they have to be dealt with. They are part of the picture, the art in the morning. You cannot deny their reality.

[Cancer] didn't make me more intense about not working more and just having fun more. It didn't do that either.