Interviews

Unfocused rage, useless rage—that stuff’s not helpful. But rage that propels and compels? Rage that changes things, changes people . . . That’s good rage. That’s useful.

How can I arrange them or build an infrastructure for them that will give other people that sense of their being connected?

You know, I only work on things if I feel I have a connection to it. I don’t try to be deliberately weird for being weird’s sake.

I write for something far greater than me, or any of us, and just hope that it responds or hears in some way. And I know it sounds mystical, or something, but so be it.

The thing about being a poet that’s weird, as a person, is that people who want to understand you as a person, have a hard time understanding what it is that you’re doing as a poet.

And I’d like to write them if I can, for like a long spell. It feels almost like a dream state. There’s some surreal things in that long poem. I love long poems. I’m always a sucker for long poems. I don’t know what it is. Long labors are fruitful.

You have to be prepared to say that the failure is worth it if it means at the end of it, you have something you can be proud of.

I mean, I say this so much in interviews, but whatever, I really like the line between horror and beauty. The same reason you’re so captivated by a beautiful painting is the same reason you want to look at a car crash.