I had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your friend is right. You can't do three things well.

You've read some of the poems in this new unpublished book [Walker's Alphabet], e.g., the poem "C." I have a number of poems whose titles are letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F.

Free verse is chained in sentence-to-sentence links and breaks free in line breaks.

The crows that are predatory are something you have to deal with. For me, they also become associated with cancer cells.

I feel compassionate, because I know [students] all have to go down this road of suffering and it's going to be tough.

The Chinese traditionally have revered age and longevity - I have one and hope for the other! - so, in Taipei, a city-hub for global Chinese who dis-identify with the People's Republic of China's construction of a Communist nationalist Chineseness, I called on the Chinese muse of writing to witness my emergence out of the academic woods.

[My muse] she's impatient with me, because I don't do what I should do: sit down and write.