I'm very interested in the materiality of language. I wonder if, perhaps, this comes from my background in the visual arts. I was a potter for a numb….

I think the grotesque can inspire intimacy (it draws us in) as well as awe, like the cabinets of curiosities..

I tend to view the superstitions or fragments of myth as triggers for lyric inquiry. I also find I think of this kind of language as ars poetica - if….

I like to work with multiple sections because they lend themselves to the structure of the poem: its intensifications and arcs and closures. I feel l….

My obsessions tend to cluster, so I often have families of poems in which only a couple of them make it to the book. It can be satisfying to banish p….

I tend to employ braided narrative threads in the lyric, so often echoes (of phrases or images) will occur and will hit my ear so I can shape differe….

Because I love narrative but am more lyrically inclined, I've learned that if I freight titles with narrative information (the who, what, when, where….

I prefer assonance and internal rhyme to end rhyme. I mean, the sonnet already looks like a box. Best not to get too boxed in, though..

I'm a compulsive enjamber. I'm drawn to half-meanings created by the line, so that's definitely an element of craft that's always on my mind. And I'm….

I tend to gravitate toward the realm of superstition (cures and such) and odd scientific facts (like bioluminescent shrimp and fistulated cows). I li….

Many of the poets I most admire have a way of embodying their peculiar obsessions via landscape that can sometimes seem magical..

Many of the poems weave autobiographical elements with fabular or mythic materials..