Interviews

I have always believed that “the personal is political and the political is personal.” So to make sense of it all, I have to distill these all-consuming horrors down into a drop that I can manage through first a few words, then a few sentences.

The role of the poet is to try to keep speaking truth and shining a little light. The role of the poet is to stand up for human beings whose weeping voices are not being heard. – Naomi Shihab Nye

This journey was about discovering how deception and love can go hand in hand in families and how that can be both a source of love and danger.

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.