Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.

My advice to my younger self would have been, "Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out."

I don't know if there are topics that I unconsciously avoid, but as soon as they pop up in my writing, I try to take on those topics, whether or not I publish the poems.

Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.

Over the years, I became more and more interested in the forms and techniques in which things could be said.

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it.

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event.

I love going to movie theaters, even in the era of movies on-demand and Netflix. When you are in a movie theater, no one can reach you by phone or other means.

If you are my friend and say to me, "Please don't write about this," I won't.

The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.

I had no idea, when I was writing early on, that my poems would be published or read by anyone, never mind people I knew or would meet. I just wrote urgently - naïvely, I suppose, looking back.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

Once again, I felt as I needed to flee or I’d die. That was how my life was panning out.

Morals are like social classes, there are poor and rich people.

God expects of us only what He Himself has supplied.

I was just an okay person.

If you can make nature and technology friends, then you can make everyone friends; you can make everyone intact. That's what women do a lot - they're the glue between a lot of things.

You can't give people pride, but you can provide the kind of understanding that makes people look to their inner strengths and find their own sense of pride

I'm like a bunch of college guys who got together and said, 'Let's make a dude, a crazy dude'.

Somebody once told me that whatever you're listening to at 30 years old is going to be what you listen to for life and that's largely true.

Why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences?