I had not read George Eliot, so read a few. I felt ashamed I hadn't read "Middlemarch" before.

Louise Gluck, C.K. Williams, Thomas Lux. A lot of the poets that I like are the ones that influenced me as a writer.

Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all. The comic element works as a surprise. It is unexpected and energizing.

Baudelaire's L'Héautontimorouménos was long seen to be a sexual sadomasochistic poem, it is now generally accepted that the poem is about writing poetry.

A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.

Love doesn't need a reason. Hate needs a reason.

He thinks of that ocean house and wishes he were back in his former life or that one could take one moment and remain inside it like an egg inside its shell, instead of constantly being hurried into the future by good luck or bad.