I Excavate History. I Look At Lives

I Like Connecting The Abstract To The Concrete. There's A Tension In That. I Believe The Reader Or Listener Should Be Able To Enter The Poem As A Participant. So I Try To Get Past Resolving Poems.

Poetry Is A Kind Of Distilled Insinuation. It's A Way Of Expanding And Talking Around An Idea Or A Question. Sometimes, More Actually Gets Said Through Such A Technique Than A Full Frontal Assault.

There's A Sameness About American Poetry That I Don't Think Represents The Whole People. It Represents A Poetry Of The Moment, A Poetry Of Evasion, And I Have Problems With This. I Believe Poetry Has Always Been Political, Long Before Poets Had To Deal With The Page And White Space . . . It's Natural.

Poetry Helps Me Understand Who I Am. It Helps Me Understand The World Around Me. But Above All, What Poetry Has Taught Me Is The Fact That I Need To Embrace Mystery In Order To Be Completely Human.

Whoever Said Men Hit Harder When Women Are Around, Is Right. Word For Word, We Beat The Love Out Of Each Other.