 Who is the ideal reader? God only knows. |
| The point of an experiment is not to arrive at a predetermined end point, to prove or disprove anything, but to deliver a poem that reveals much about the process taken. |
| I find it exhausting to administer a magazine without an office or paid staff. |
| The poet must decide not to impose his feelings in order to write without sentimentality. |
| Poets can't resist the dramatic pull of their lives and so inevitably write autobiographical verse. |
| Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems. |
| We are comfortable with the fact that we cannot know personally what happened in the world before we were born, yet we are uncomfortable with the notion that we will stop engaging with time at some point in the future. |
| If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world, then it has had its desired effect. |
| My obsession with time informs my poetry so completely it is hard for me to summarize it. We want time to pass, for new things to happen to us, we want to hold on to certain moments, we don't want our lives to end. |
| I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have. |
| I sometimes like to tinker with poems that have failed, ones that I have sent aside. Even years afterward, I will revisit them if there is something about them that I cannot give up on. |
| I feel very connected to poets across the country. |
