There are mornings when everything brims with promise, even my empty cup.

When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right.

This evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness.

When I was a kid, I suppose I got more praise for being able to draw things and paint things than I did for my little amateur poems I was writing. But the thing that I'm trying to do with my painting is that I'm trying to keep it in the realm of pleasure. I don't show my work, I don't try to sell it.

There's nothing wrong with delighting in what you do. In fact, most of the fun you'll have as a poet will come about during the process of writing.

I try to be realistic with students. And say that there's a good chance that they're not going to get a creative writing teaching job, that there aren't enough jobs to go around and the university faculties are cutting back on staff and that they may have to get some other kind of work. None of them wants to hear that, but it is true and I think I'm a good example for them of somebody who took the other route.

If I don't take the risk, I'll wind up with a bloodless poem. I have to be out there on the edge.