No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

Poems are difficult to silence.

A couple of years ago I picked up New Yorker writer Alma Guillermoprieto's "The Heart That Bleeds," which is reportage from Latin America in the 1990s. You can predict that some books will give you a thrill, but you can't predict the books that will hit you hard. It is a little bit like falling in love.

No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered.

But I never listen to music while I'm writing.

I have lots of things that aren't so old that I value, such as a copy of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," which he signed for me.

In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.