Poetry is such an ancient art, and I consider myself young within that art.

I think that the people who really accomplish things in this world have to have a little bit of crazy in them.

I like when a poem ends on its "receipts," meaning it gives me something tactile or tangible to dwell on as I exit the reading experience. So I strive to end my own poems that way as well.

I write to be recorder, observer, participant, and sometimes, even judge. I want to engage the world as I see it with my whole self - all of those different aspects of it.

I switch between fixed forms and free verse often, and enjoy being a poet who can "swing both ways," so to speak.

I write a lot, and then forget what I've written, and then come back to it and say, "Not bad, I should do something with this!"

Only after my father's death could I speak my own individual truths about him. In a sense, I had to turn him into a character, a figure I could control through language.

Part of elegy is confrontation - not just with the idea of death, but with the person who has died.

I lived a life I knew I had to hide My father's edicts resolutely grim.

Editing is work, and it's hard to do while working on one's own writing.

It is the task of radical thought, since the world is given to us in unintelligibility, to make it more unintelligible, more enigmatic, more fabulous.

You can and you can't You will and you won't You'll be damn'd if you do You'll be damn'd if you don't.

Peace is its own reward.

You can begin really looking for a relationship . . . when you can (appreciate) the whole concept of giving to someone, not just taking.

I do go back to Brazil once a year. I miss my family.

Consequently, the sensuous aspect of art is related only to the two theoretical sensesof sight and hearing, while smell, taste, and touch remain excluded.

I feel like I try to keep learning every time I step off a runway, I try to get better with each one.

Precisely because of the greatness of God, we don't have to be great at all. Just in awe.

If you look at the range of Hollywood movies playing in most cities in the developing world, you'd hate the America they portray, too.

We will find grace to help us when we need it