I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.

Poetry takes courage because you have to face things and you try to articulate how you feel.

One of the things that distinguishes poetry from ordinary speech is that in a very few number of words, poetry captures some kind of deep feeling, and rhythm is the way to get there. Rhythm is the way the poetry carries itself.

The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry, is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader, and that meaning doesn't exist or inhere in poems alone.

Poetry is meant to inspire readers and listeners, to connect them more deeply to themselves even as it links them more fully to others. But many people feel put off by the terms of poetry, its odd vocabulary, its notorious difficulty.

Poems mesmerized me, and I felt better when I was writing them, or trying to - more in touch with something deep and dark within myself.