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I like poems that inspire, that make us think and reflect. It's like putting love into the world for whoever picks it up.

I find that my reading, particularly nonfiction, can inspire a poem as well as anything else.

Poetry gives us courage and sets us straight with the world. Poems are great companions and friends.

My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader.

I've been influenced by poets as diverse as Dylan Thomas, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.

All my children inspire me in life, and that always comes out in the writing.

The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful.

What inspires me? I am so inspired every day. I am inspired by thinkers. I am inspired by rebellion. I am inspired by children. I have been inspired by love.

On the subject of literary genres, I've always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I'd love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.