In recent poems, I have abandoned the theme of not being able to write for an even more obsessive subject, the nature of language, particularly English, in the formation of my imagination and being.

It's why muse is so impatient with me. I don't ever go to her until after the teaching or whatever is over.

One should be able to teach adequately and feel good about it.

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

With so many brothers, I could always find a pair of shorts to borrow and run around in.

In Sister Swing, the two sisters have boyfriends and they go to bed with them, but the descriptions are not graphic. They're minimal. The sex is not graphic in the way that DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover has all these graphic passages.

In the same way, the people whom I most abhor, I abhor them for elements that I abhor in myself.