Signs of a maddening system of writing and counting that calibrates the values of something the poet does not yet know. Praxis is therefore poetics.

Just because suddenly you have a sabbatical doesn't mean that the writing occasion comes to you.

Sometimes the taproot and the vines are far apart. Like English and the Asian poem.

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.

I look at my young students, and I no longer have the sense that, oh, I'm the authority and they have to meet a certain standard. It's like, oh, look at these young ones. They've got such a hard road in front of them. I don't envy them having life ahead of them.

When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer."

If I could write a novel while I'm walking, I probably would.