Historically, there are hierarchies of purity. Certain aspects of poetry are very, very pure. The lyric poem can't be anything but the lyric poem.

I would say that when I write prose I'm a more socially responsible person. I'm much more a citizen of the world. But the instability of the poetry, the emotional jaggedness, is also me.

Society imposes an identity on you because of the way you look. Your struggle as a self has to do with an identity being imposed on you that you know is not your identity.

I resist thinking of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a writer who has pulled a fast one and hoodwinked this institution into giving me a job and health insurance.

We all think of ourselves as our subjectivity, our consciousness.

I think that when you reveal things that are going to cause pain, you have rhetorical resources in poetry.

All ideas about identity, of course, fit perfectly into the social media wonderland we live in. They seem to really connect. There's a science-fiction aspect to our contemporary life. What's virtual, what's real.