Genre/forms are institutional questions mainly. Like matter to MFA programs in terms of which workshop you can teach.

I'm sort of annoyed that some very basic things about poetic forms were not conveyed to me in the various poetry courses I took over the years.

I remember reading Paul Fussell my first year teaching at U of Hawai'i and being like, oh, it has a turn! Why didn't anyone tell me?

I was told over and over the poetry in forms was "conservative" but there was no analysis of why this was so.

If the enemy attacks, it is because God is giving you much more

Advice to son: Never confuse "I love you" with "I want to marry you."

Don’t wait for people to be kind, show them how.

You know I could rent you out as a decoy for duck hunters?

Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!

It is the broken heart that makes us human in the end.

It sounds like something from a Woody Guthrie song, but it's true; I was raised in a freight car.

The final mystery is oneself.

We were far more civilized in our divorce than we had ever been in marriage. It seemed we'd finally found something we could do together amicably.

As my mother says, your forties are when you finally pay for your past mistakes, the cigarettes and sunburns, the Big Macs and smooth-talking men. She may be right.