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Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.

Hmmm. I think a lot of people can write poems that are howls of anguish. I think I've probably written such things and then torn them up.

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.

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

With contemporary poetry having approximately as many fans outside the immediate field as there are devotees of undergoing knee surgery, any sentient, breathing reader who's genuinely interested in poetry... not scared of it... seems a godsend.

I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.

When I'm writing the poem, I feel like I have to close my eyes. I don't mean literally, but you invite a kind of blindness, and that's the birth of the poem.