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Poetry is one of the few nasty childhood habits I've managed to grow out of.

When I was in college, I wrote poetry very seriously, and then once I had started writing short stories, I didn't go back to poetry, partially because I felt like I understood how incredibly difficult it was.

Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.

For better or worse, poetry is my life.

One problem we face comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working to train ourselves to write poetry.

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have.

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you've got to burn away all the peripherals.

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever. I'm not really book-smart.