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I taught writing classes at the University of Pennsylvania for a number of years and I realized that all you can do is encourage people and give them assignments and hope they will write them.

I joined a writing class at a nearby community center, where I was the youngest participant by about 40 years. Once a week, I'd funnel down a staircase and join the dozen retirees crowded in folding chairs around a table to discuss one another's stories.

I am always urging my students to honor their writing practice, to set up a schedule.

I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself.

For example, many colleges in their writing programs teach some of my work.

I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.

Teaching and writing, to me, is really just seduction; you go to where people are and you find something that they're interested in and you try and use that to convince them that they should be interested in what you have to say.

Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.