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 took me 14 years to write poems about Vietnam. I had never thought about writing about it, and in a way I had been systematically writing around it.

Poetry is a process of getting back to the unconscious. Hence, I am always writing-even when I'm not facing the white space. I feel writers are like reservoirs of images. We take in what is around us.

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

Vietnam helped me to look at the horror and terror in the hearts of people and realize how we can't aim guns and set booby traps for people we have never spoken a word to. That kind of impersonal violence mystifies me.

I close my eyes and can see men drawing lines in the dust. America pushes through the membrane of mist and smoke, and I'm a small boy again in Bogalusa.

I’ve been here before, dreaming myself backwards, among grappling hooks of light. True to the seasons, I’ve lived every word spoken. Did I walk into someone’s nightmare?