I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.

I think of my poems as personal and public at the same time. You could say they serve as psychological overlays. One fits on top of the other, and hopefully there's an ongoing evolution of clarity.

It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.

Poetry is a kind of distilled insinuation. It's a way of expanding and talking around an idea or a question. Sometimes, more actually gets said through such a technique than a full frontal assault.

We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project.

Students often have such a lofty idea of what a poem is, and I want them to realize that their own lives are where the poetry comes from. The most important things are to respect the language; to know the classical rules, even if only to break them; and to be prepared to edit, to revise, to shape.

I think of language as our first music.