Editing is work, and it's hard to do while working on one's own writing..

I think that the people who really accomplish things in this world have to have a little bit of crazy in them..

I need sometimes to hang back in the shadows with my pen and paper, and then other times, I need to take center stage in my own creations. The trick ….

I'm educating myself more about world poetry. I know a lot about contemporary American poetry, so I felt I needed to learn more about figures like Bo….

I find it hard to write poems in reaction to world/national events unless there's a way in that's so evident to me that I can't deny the urge to writ….

I like when a poem ends on its "receipts," meaning it gives me something tactile or tangible to dwell on as I exit the reading experience. So I striv….

Only after my father's death could I speak my own individual truths about him. In a sense, I had to turn him into a character, a figure I could contr….

In terms of what I write about, I consider no subject too small. Often it's the small moments, that through the amplification of poetry, reveal the l….

I write when I can. I have no set writing practices, or times, or methods. I write when I'm not doing other things - in the odd times when I'm travel….

Poetry is such an ancient art, and I consider myself young within that art..

When poets die, other poets take it personally, almost as an affront. A lot of us "left behind" are thinking that poetry is the one thing keeping us ….

Young poets worry that their experiences - whether urban or rural, immigrant or native, small town, suburb, or big city - aren't worthy of the writte….

I do bring my teaching together with my writing. I make students write in class, and do the same prompts I give them. I'm always on the lookout for t….

Social media is alluring, tempting, frustrating, etc. We mistake our interactions in social media as community, but is community possible when you do….

It's fun to see someone grow as a writer, moving from their first workshopped poems to publishing their earliest poems to having a book accepted for ….

Each poem seems to demand its own formal approach. In both drafting and revision, I'll play around with line lengths and stanza formations, eventuall….

I lived a life I knew I had to hide My father's edicts resolutely grim..

I write to be recorder, observer, participant, and sometimes, even judge. I want to engage the world as I see it with my whole self - all of those di….

I write a lot, and then forget what I've written, and then come back to it and say, "Not bad, I should do something with this!".

I switch between fixed forms and free verse often, and enjoy being a poet who can "swing both ways," so to speak..

Part of elegy is confrontation - not just with the idea of death, but with the person who has died..