Everyone always says that having kids is messy and sloppy. It's true, but you as a parent have to try to bring some boundaries and control over that experience, or you'd have out-of-control kids.

I love when I meet generous poets, and generous meaning nice people, who give to the poetry community, who do interviews, read other people's books, and talk about them, spread the...love, I guess. That means a lot to me.

My gut was always that if I taught students poetry, I would give too much of myself to them and have nothing left.

I've always felt alone and isolated, and living on the West Coast, there's no poetry community out here, and if there is, it's really spread out - because it's LA, it's spread out.

It took me awhile to not be ashamed to be a poet in the business environment, and to be a business person in the poet environment.

I do think that given my background as a poet, and also I work in a different field, you're sort of neither here nor there.

My life all-around is really different than a lot of other poets. Not poets that are parents, too, but just that I can hardly find anyone who works in the industries that I've worked in.