I'm uncomfortable with the focus on the poet and not on the poem.

I am this space my body believes in.

I knew life Began where I stood in the dark, Looking out into the light.

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.

Tonight I feel the stars are out to use me for target practice.

I excavate history. I look at lives buried under too much silence. Periods of time, like slavery, have to be revisited, reimagined, so we can move through them.

We have to embrace the good over the bad. That has to be one's personal project.

It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.

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.

I think of language as our first music.

I said that love heals from inside.

Magic is a trick, and the trick is to believe it's real.

The ego hates losing – even to God.

I don't want to miss out on the chance of having a good time.

My aim is not to exhibit craft, but rather to submerge it, and make it rightfully the handmaiden of beauty, power and emotional content.

My favorite TV shows are Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, Modern Family, and Veep.

You couldn't have human society without language.

Nascar will certainly not be one of my challenges in the future.

The game will fade one day. I realize that success is one thing; impact is another. I live to impact people.

Audiences arent fools - their judgement really is important. And the true heroes of films are the investors. They take the risk, after all.

What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? - I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can.