We're all vulnerable in our various ways, and what we are physically, our bodies, is what has developed with the goal of keeping that life safe and i….

Often I'm struck by something that I read; then I go and research it a little more, especially if I begin a poem, and I find out that I need to know ….

I don't write or think too much about the word "salvation." I might; I probably should. We are such needy creatures, needing to be saved, to feel we ….

Poetry is so close to music, not just in cadence and sound but in silences. That's why, to me, I can't talk about prose poems. I can talk about poeti….

I love the language. I'm just totally fascinated by the sound and the look of words and the kinds of cadences you can create with them, the various k….

In poetry I can let the language go, allow an image that seems out of place to enter and see what happens, always listening to the music that's being….

Ordering is very important with essays, even if a reader doesn't read the essays or the poems in order through the book....

Straight up from this road Away from the fitted particles of frost Coating the hull of each chick pea, And the stiff archer bug making its way In….

I like poetry because poetry - even in free verse - is formal, and it has to be very concise and packed and rich, and I like the feeling of having to….

I see my poems as interlinked. No poem gives an answer. It may offer other questions, it may instigate other questions that then become poems..

The poem is a process, a way for me to discover questions, to ask them clearly or to discover the results of certain suppositions. Suppositions are a….

How can I appreciate light from an aging sun shining through new configurations neither pine nor ash? How can I extol the nuturing fragrances from….

Poetry uses language to create a music borne inside human experiences and emotions..

What triggers a poem for me is not the same as what triggers an essay. My mind is geared now to looking for, or to watching out for, the image that a….

From the beginning I felt that I didn't ever want to leave the impression that the process of writing a poem is totally mysterious. I couldn't explai….

I do love writing prose interspersed with the poetry of other people. Their rhythms break into my prose and create a connection..

I'd rather call prose poems something else, for clarity - something like "poetic prose," prose that contains a quality of poetry, but not poems..

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subjec….

I've spent much of my life being attuned to watching for an image or a phrase that can trigger what might be a poem - could become a poem..

To my mind, most prose poems are more prose than poetry. They don't possess most of the qualities of a poem..

The greatest tragedy that can befall a poet is to be praised by being misunderstood..