I like having a phrase lying around to get poems started. It's like having a key.

People get anxious about dividing sorts of poetry, say Confessionalism from political poetry. But Confessionalism is very much an expression of racial privilege and of class privilege. I don't think it's always a blind expression of these privileges but it does have its genesis in them, in the politics of them.

I do believe in Jesus as wholly God and wholly human, and I believe the human part was human.

I think about the body kind of all the time, being as how I'm really uncomfortable in mine.

There's no such thing as an animal too big too kill, AND we're cornered by such animals every day.

If I can quote myself, I explained whatever it is I'm doing once for No Tell Motel, and I still think it's the clearest I've ever been about this: I don't write free verse poems - mostly because I can't. But I am interested in the musical effects achievable with free verse.

I wanted to be a composer for a while, and for a while, and maybe still, I found writing music much easier than writing poetry. So maybe my brain clings to it.

I do try to incorporate particular rhythmic and generally sonic motifs I discover in music as such, and if one thinks of language in a narrow sense, that, perhaps, suggests a possibility for a rhythmic sensibility that enters poetry from outside of language.

I just can't write and listen to music at the same time.

I had/have a habit of sending books out before they're ready. And then I edit with almost absurd intensity. But I've done about a book a year.

A white noise app wouldn't work for me - I would be too distracted by the non-white noise noises I could still hear, even more distracted than i would otherwise be. So I have to just accept the regular noises.

I was just thinking about how my grandparents, who raised me, would be considered white trash, whatever that means - mostly for being racists, I'd say. And how, as a child, I wanted to be like them, and identified with them culturally.

I don't know that I find either aspect of Jesus more interesting than the other, although maybe I think about the God one more.

I hope I can write toward my interests. But poets should be afraid of too fluidly responding to what they're interested in.

I think I cause a lot of headaches for editors - it's impossible to keep up with the ridiculous amount of changes I make.